Cigarettes and Gunmetal
by MonoGlyph
Summary: The Solar Kingdom, but not as you know it. Gargantuan skyscrapers line the streets and mechanical transports dot the skies. Artificial constructs reign over most electronics built within the last decade. Mechanical and bioengineered enhancements adorn the body of the modern equine. In short: Sundry tales from a cyberpunk Equestria.
1. Introduction, Table of Contents, etc

[…] _Over the last two centuries ponykind and their countless kindred sapient species bore witness to what is unquestionably the most radical technological and societal revolution recorded in the short 50 million years that we've inhabited the face of this earth. Our once-primitive villages and fiefs have evolved into sprawling cityscapes populated by hundreds of millions of individuals apiece. Naturally, this population boom brought with it a number of problems including—but not limited to—rising instances of mental disorders due to perceived depersonalization and interpersonal disaffection, increased crime rates, popularization of anti-authoritarianism and other undesirable movements, rampant materialism, et cetera. _[…]

_Our joining of minds resulted in an era of Enlightenment and the inception of the scientific method. Technological progress was made at an unprecedented pace, accelerating exponentially with each year. Religious and, to a lesser extent, magical study was cast aside in favor of advancement in the seemingly more pragmatic fields of the technical and the manifest. The Immortal Solar Monarch Celestia, once seen as a godlike paragon to move the sun itself, was relegated to a more grounded position as an executive in the Equestrian government. Church attendance plummeted._ […]

_We find ourselves in a dangerous position. The establishment of the vast digital network known as the Expanse and its social aspect, Grapevine and its affiliates, have made it possible to converse and trade ideas with people anywhere on the planet in a matter of nanoseconds. The potential for innovation is astonishing, as is the potential for abuse. The law and those who enforce it, as they currently stand, cannot hope to keep up with the inevitable fallout. _[…]

_The theory of an impending event known as the singularity, (wherein technological advance accelerates to the point where our future is no longer possible to predict), has been scrutinized at length and ruled unlikely by popular scientific opinion, but this does not dissemble the fact that a major restructuring is in order if our society is to continue to function. Failure to do so will result in catastrophic consequences and, in the worst-case scenario, a global devolution into complete anarchy._

—William Wright, chief administrator of the Manehatten Archives,

April 2001

* * *

**Episode 1: Brain Cancer District**

**Characters featured: Twilight Sparkle, Shining Armor**

**Additional Tags: [Mystery]**

Craving change, Twilight takes a break from the tedium of being Princess Celestia's star apprentice and injects herself into an ongoing murder investigation with her brother's help. The head of the local mafia family has been slain under mysterious circumstances. A vigilante stalks the streets of Canterlot. Can the inexperienced unicorn shed some light on this case, and more importantly, should she?

**Inspirations include the novels **_**Altered Carbon **_**and **_**Thirteen **_**(AKA **_**Black Man)**_**.**

* * *

**Episode 2: On the Subject of Hedonism**

**Characters featured: Pinkie Pie, Rarity**

The freelance hacker Pinkamena Pie (online personality 'Eu4ia' to her clients) is in debt to the drug-dealing zebra living in the Everfree. Running out of time, Pinkie takes part in a dangerous corporate raid on the headquarters of Carousel Industries to retrieve an unconventional AI prototype. The CEO of the company, Rarity, juggles company recruitment, familial problems with her estranged sister and dealing with the thieving hooligans.

**Inspirations include the novel **_**Neuromancer **_**and the tabletop RPG **_**Shadowrun**_**.**

* * *

**Episode 3: All is Fair [coming soon]**

**Characters featured: Rainbow Dash, Lightning Dust**

**Additional Tags: [War]**

An artificially-grown genetic variant, Rainbow Dash, is in charge of a newly-assembled squad deployed to the Saddle Arabian border city of Bridleon. The Gryphon Commonwealth has mobilized to invade the territory for a yet-unknown purpose. Unless something changes and soon, Equestria and Saddle Arabia are posed to lose the city to overwhelming numbers. Rainbow and her second-in-command, Lightning Dust, set off on a daring mission to find and destroy their foes' command post and destabilize their assault efforts.

**Inspirations include the novel **_**Broken Angels**_**.**


	2. Brain Cancer District (Part One)

Eleven o'clock at night. Mr. Levin exits the large, fairly expensive restaurant that his family owns, taking a few seconds to secure the doors behind him with an appropriately state-of-the-art DNA-encoded lock. As he looks east, he sees the empty street, windows painted silver in the moonlight. Turning west, he sees a lone figure approaching him. Mr. Levin reaches into his saddlebag with a levitation spell, firmly grasping something unseen. The approaching stallion (for it is a stallion's voice Levin hears) breaks out into song.

"_Oh my darlin', oh my darlin', oh my darlin' Clementine/_

_Thou art lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine…_"

Swaying slightly and still singing like a backing vocalist in some amateur musical, the stallion passes and continues on his way. Mr. Levin relaxes and releases his grip inside his saddlebag.

_Just some damned transient, drunk off his ass. I swear there are more and more of them every day._

Turning on his heel, Mr. Levin begins his trek back home. The day had been tiring and he wants nothing more than to sleep. Although the shadowy stallion is gone, his tune refuses to leave Mr. Levin's head. A few notes of it escape under his breath, though he's not familiar with the lyrics. As seconds wear on, the tune grows more and more insistent in his head and it's not long until it completely envelops his thoughts. Were his mind not otherwise preoccupied, Mr. Levin would suspect that something was terribly wrong. And then, as violently as it invaded, the tune fades away, leaving nothing.

When a colleague finds Mr. Levin lying on the pavement the next morning, the restaurant owner is unable to recount his experience, unable to move or to speak.

* * *

_There is a quiet bustle inside the facility as the transporters move her through the halls. Doctors and nurses scamper out of the way of the incoming stretcher. She glances at them as they pass. They appear thoroughly disinterested. The stretcher is moving uncomfortably fast; it's suspended on an air cushion rather than conventional wheels. A few windows blur past. Something's tapping on the other side. _

"_What's that sound?" Twilight asks dreamily. _

"_Sound? That's rain, honey," her father answers._

"_Rain," she echoes._

"_Incompetence from Cloudsdale. Their orders are to keep our air space clear. They'll surely hear from me about this one." The third voice is irate but businesslike. It belongs to the Princess, who is presumably following some paces behind the stretcher. _

"_I want to see it," says Twilight, her voice scarcely more than a whisper. Her parents exchange anxious looks._

"_We'll accompany you outside after the operation," her father promises._

"_Mmm. We'll see about that," says the Princess. "I suspect the doctors won't much like that idea." _

_The lusca plates mounted on the ceiling are harsh, almost blinding. Twilight shuts her eyes, but she can still see the flashes behind her eyelids as they fly by, one by one. A half minute is spent in the merciful gloom of the elevator, and then she's speeding through the halls once more. At last the caravan arrives to the operating room. Sinister silver-plated instruments are set in orderly cases surrounding the table. The large bulk of the autosurgeon hangs overhead, stainless steel arms folded and withdrawn, like the legs of a massive deceased insect. There's one arm for every instrument, be it scalpel, cauterizing laser or buzz saw. Its photoreceptor regards her stoically. Knives of horror pierce through the drug-induced haze that clouds Twilight's mind. _

"_M-mom?" Her mother looks over, trying ineffectually to hide her worry. "Is this going to _hurt_?"_

"_Oh, sweetie…"_

"_Yes, it will probably hurt," the Princess cuts in. "The doctors need you to be at least semi-conscious during the procedure, otherwise your mind will reject the prosthetic and you'll never be able to cast another spell."_

_Tears well up in Twilight's eyes. "Do I… Do I have to…?"_

"_We will be unable to make any real progress in your schooling until your horn is upgraded. Yes, you have to, provided that you want to continue your studies with me." Her voice softens fractionally. "Not to worry. They've administered the strongest anesthetic legally available. The pain should be comparably dull. If it isn't, you may elect to have your memories of the procedure erased with amnesiacs afterwards. So. Would you like to proceed?"_

_Her memory begins to collapse amidst visions of gleaming steel arms and the high-pitched whine of the saw. She can't say if she ever did see the rain that day._

* * *

She awoke. The last shreds of the nightmare flashed behind her eyes and began to recede into her subconscious. She sighed, wiping the cold sweat from her brow. Her foreleg brushed against the cool mithril base of the magical amplifier that was installed into her horn that night.

_Memories I don't need. First one of these nightmares in, what, two years? Why today?_

She glanced at the window. Falling angel tears rapped ceaselessly on the glass.

_Ah. Yeah. That would do it. _

A glitch in the recently-established SkySystems weather net had brought rain to Canterlot once more.

_Fucking unreliable pegasus engineers. _

She struggled out of bed and trudged to the door into the living room. The room was wide and covered in an elaborate carpet patterned with lions pouncing at fleeing gazelle whose horns were twisted into stylistic spirals. Twilight despised the carpet but the portly landlord insisted that she leave it be. She was free to do whatever else she wanted. She lived on the top floor of an ivory skyscraper called Hotel Anderson, in the designated royal suite. No expense was spared for Princess Celestia's most faithful student. The outside wall of the living room was glass, lending a striking view of the city below. The buildings resembled teeth in the gargantuan maw of some prodigious horror.

"Morning, Twilight!"

She looked over to see her drake assistant, Spike, coming out of the kitchenette. He was young; his shiny purple scales had not yet lost their luster. He was mostly unenhanced save for a single metallic Grapevine port protruding from his skull. Unlike Twilight's, his was surplus hardware, needing to be connected to a power outlet to function.

"I was afraid you wouldn't wake up in time. You remember we're supposed to have a guest today, don't you?"

She grunted, not really listening. Before Spike could ask again, she was in the bathroom, the door sliding smoothly shut behind her. In the mirror her reflection glared at her as though she had personally insulted it. A half hour was spent standing passively beneath the antibacterial spray coming from the showerhead.

"You have a visitor," the hotel AI told her as the dryer blasted her with hot air.

"Yeah, got it, thanks."

She activated her neuro-optical interface on a whim and connected to the Grapevine. Several windows and prompts flashed in her vision.

**World News:** Border Dispute between Saddle Arabia and Gryphon Kingdoms Escalates into Full-Scale War

**Business News:** Destek Lmtd. Files for Bankruptcy

**Science News:** Terraforming Efforts Begin on Artemis II

**Science News:** Lunar Colonization Proposal Rejected Again

**Local News: **Preparations for the Celestial Festival Underway

She flicked her eyes to the right. The screen shifted to the forum page obligingly. She groaned when the general section came into view.

**New Thread:** wat if equestria started the sa/gk war by Eu4ia

**New Thread:** will code 4 food by Eu4ia

**New Thread:** Experienced Hazmat Workers Wanted by Serypth

**New Thread:** any1 know y celestia doesnt want moon citys by Eu4ia

**New Thread**…

Following the introduction of the neuro-optical interface to the general public, physical typing quickly became obsolete. Upgrading to the NOI meant that ponies would no longer need to carry around computers and keyboards, and would be able to enter words into the Grapevine just by thinking them, which tended to be faster and eliminated spelling mistakes and shortcuts almost completely. But not everybody has accepted the technology with open forelegs. Certain fringe groups maintained that keyboards were much more responsive than the NOI in some contexts. Furthermore, keyboards were far less expensive than the interface and did not require a cranial operation for installation. Twilight had never taken much of an interest in these arguments.

Eu4ia was a well-known keyboard purist and would periodically flood the message boards with indecipherable posts. Another user by the name of Commander_Giblet once jokingly petitioned with a number of others for her to get a neuro-optical interface or leave the forums forever. When the administrators finally got around to deleting the topic, there were some five hundred signatures.

Twilight disconnected from the Grapevine and shut her interface off with a practiced flourish.

_Nothing of interest._

Shining Armor was waiting for her at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee to his mouth. Whereas Twilight may have lacked any sense of proper hospitality when it came to her older brother's visits, Spike often got him settled in her stead.

"Good morning, Twily."

She cringed.

"Come on, Shining. When are you going to stop calling me that?"

"I thought you liked that name," he said, grinning.

"When I was six, maybe." She dug around in the refrigerator for a few silent seconds and produced a lemon. The UniChef vibroknife she was holding cut through the flesh of the citrus in an instant.

Shining Armor chuckled to himself.

"You haven't changed all _that_ much, you know."

"Careful what you say. I've got a knife."

He looked at the instrument and yawned theatrically.

"What kind of Royal Guard would I be if I couldn't disarm some pampered damsel barely out of her teens?"

Twilight smiled, stowing the knife in its magnetic holder.

"Well fuck you too, guy."

She poured herself a cup of boiling water and added a tea bag with a lemon slice. The toaster spit out two crispy slices of bread. Breakfast as usual.

Her eyes darted across the table as she chewed on the toast. Shining Armor looked uncharacteristically disheveled. His mane wasn't combed, his eyes were glazed over and there were traces of a five o'clock shadow on his chin.

"Sheesh. No wonder you can't get a girlfriend. What's up, Shining, tough night?"

"Not particularly." He took a sip of coffee and exhaled wearily through his nostrils. "I was out drinking with Heartland."

"Heartland?"

"You don't remember him? The chief of police."

"Oh. Yeah." Twilight vaguely recalled the middle-aged, whiskered stallion from the celebration her brother held when he got promoted to captain of the Royal Guard. "How is he?" she asked, feigning interest.

"He's a damn mess. Something happened two nights ago. High-stakes case. A lot of eyes on the CPD right now from high up, but the investigation's at a stand-still."

"Really? What's going on?" Twilight asked, now marginally more invested.

"It seems that the head of the local mafia was found brain-dead a couple of blocks east. Normally the police would be able to read the victim's memory to experience the crime first-hand, but as I'm sure you can imagine, that's not an option this time."

He gestured at the window listlessly. "All they've got to go on is a few spotty Street Eye pictures. There's no apparent physical interaction with anyone out of the ordinary, and the facial recognition software won't identify the one possible witness."

"Curious."

"Isn't it." Shining glanced back to the living room where Spike was seated on a context-mold futon, tuned in to his interface. "I trust you'll keep this under wraps. The police department has kept it off the Grapevine for now, but they're due to make a press release pretty soon."

"Hmm." She grabbed a pale, plastic cylinder from the table and shook it absentmindedly, hearing the rustle of the tablets within. "I don't suppose you could convince Heartland to let me have a look at the evidence and the crime scene, could you?"

Shining Armor paused with the cup half-way to his lip, and then set it down again. "Maybe, but of what interest is any of that to you? You're not a criminology major; You're a civilian. You probably can't help."

"Granted, but I've had extensive intuition-driven spellcraft training and I've read my share of dossiers on various past criminals in Canterlot and elsewhere. I have a dedicated folder for these things at least two hundred files thick. _Come on, Shining, I'm bored out of my skull up here._"

His eyes rotated to the upper-left corner of his vision, consulting his digital calendar. "Aren't your Magical Aptitude Exams less than a week away?"

"I've been over the material. I can do most of it in my sleep."

He massaged his forehead with one of his fetlocks.

"Fine. Fine. I guess we can have a quick look if you're so eager. But I don't expect that either of us will be of any help."

Twilight shook out a single diminutive tablet and dry swallowed it, chasing it with a swig of lemon tea; a brief bitterness in the back of her throat drowned out by the tart, watered down juice. Quiesenathine: A multi-purpose mood stabilizer used to treat a spectrum of mental disorders ranging from mild anxiety to depression and mania to full-blown schizophrenia.

"Fantastic, thanks. So, when are you available to accompany me there?"

"Finish your breakfast. Might as well get this over with quickly."

* * *

Shining Armor cleared his throat and spoke.

"How's the feed look to you? Any visual artifacts or other issues?"

Several miles away, in the technical office of the police station, Twilight shook her head mutely, before remembering that the stream was one-way. She had split functionality between the neuro-optical interface and her actual visual input. The end result was that one of her eyes was receiving Shining's feed while the other remained free to view whatever it was directed at as normal. It was extremely disorienting.

"Crystal-clear," she replied. "Proceed."

The investigation had yielded two major factors for their scrutiny: the crime scene and the Street Eye images. The images were isolated on a closed network in the police station, preventing any would-be hackers from accessing them remotely. Shining Armor had seen fit to examine the crime scene personally, while Twilight was more interested in the images. For efficiency's sake, Shining Armor had set his NOI to record, and was simultaneously sending the video to Twilight, back at the office.

"Figures that it's gotta be me standing out here in the rain," he said.

"And of course you had to drag me out here with you," said Heartland, standing some feet away. "I'm starting to regret mentioning all this last night."

"You didn't have to humor us, you know," Twilight pointed out. "You're the commissioner of the CPD. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to grow a little backbone."

Shining Armor was the only one that heard the comment. He didn't relay it.

He looked down at the pavement inside the police perimeter. There was no outline of where the body had been but there were several telling stains that the rain was busily washing away.

"So Duke Levin was found here? What are these stains? I thought you said he was physically uninjured."

Heartland looked up at him, face blank.

"That's not blood. The poor bastard shat himself."

Twilight wrinkled her nose reflexively.

"I see." Shining Armor sounded unruffled. "Tell us how you found him."

"We didn't. This crime was reported by Mr. Levin's acquaintance, one Fancy Pants. He found the victim lying on his side in the middle of the street at approximately 8:30 in the morning. He claims not to have touched the body. We found a fully-charged Æther-brand firearm in Levin's saddlebag along with an untouched wallet."

"The battery's full? So he didn't fire on anyone?"

"No. You'll see as much from the images."

Twilight rubbed her chin thoughtfully, a gesture lost over the audio-only line. The mafia don was equipped with a top-of-the-line beam weapon, but did not use it. Was the attack too quick for him to react? Too quick for the Street Eye cameras to pick up? Or was he simply unaware that something was amiss until it was too late? Something about this whole scenario seemed familiar…

"Do you have any suspects?" asked Shining Armor.

Heartland shrugged.

"Fancy Pants himself seemed like a viable suspect for a while. He was the one who found the body and he has his own connections to the mob. Our undercover agents tell us that he was supposed to take Levin's seat after he passed, so there's your motive."

"But?"

"But he was home that night. His fiancé, Fleur De Lis, has confirmed his alibi."

Shining Armor looked at the stains again.

"You shouldn't rule out hired help," he said.

"Aye. Our brief interrogation didn't get much out of him but, to his credit, he didn't ask for a lawyer."

"What do _you_ think, Heartland?"

The other stallion sighed.

"I don't know. We might find Pants dead in a gutter next if the folks in charge think that he staged a coup d'etat. If this is the doing of a vigilante or, Celestia help us, another gang, Duke Levin won't be the last. Either way, my money says that we'll see more bodies before the week is through."

Twilight turned her attention to the hologram display in front of her; the first scene was suspended there, stationary but obscenely high-res. The general public was not aware that Street Eye only took a snapshot every ten seconds. The images were fully three-dimensional and took up a significant chunk of digital memory so full-motion video was currently impossible. Theoretically someone with a select few speed enhancements could murder a pony without being seen but such a scenario seemed so overwhelmingly unlikely that Twilight could not bring herself to consider it seriously.

The victim's emptied mind, the lack of physical contact or any sign that he knew that something was wrong… The conclusion came easily for a mage of Twilight's caliber.

"It's a memetic kill spell," she muttered to herself.

Shining Armor's voice floated back to her over the stream.

"Beg your pardon?"

"The unknown subject used a memetic kill spell to slay Levin."

"Care to explain what that is?" Shining asked. Twilight heard Heartland demanding to know what she was saying and saw Shining gesture for silence.

"A memetic kill spell is a lethal curse. They are not widely recognized for reasons twofold: firstly, the government mandate regarding such information is that it should not be readily available to Joe Everyman and family. Secondly, memetic kill spells are very finicky and difficult to pull off successfully. Mortality rates of the users themselves are almost half as high as their would-be victims, so even training academies for the military and the police scarcely ever mention them.

"Execution goes something like this: The user implants a specific idea in the target's mind. The material can be anything; a picture, an answer to a simple question, auditory input and so on. Once he is certain that his mark is entertaining the thought, he'll activate the spell using the idea as a parameter. It becomes cancerous, spreading through the victim's psyche and leaving them in a permanent vegetative state. I imagine that a successful completion of the maneuver requires a significant bit of mental discipline. The spell could easily backfire if the attacker slips up and considers the idea himself."

"Alright. So what does this tell us about our killer?"

Twilight looked at the holographic stills again.

"Well, the killer is a unicorn. Before you say anything, yes, I am aware that so is nearly seventy percent of Canterlot's population." She manipulated the dial to zoom in on the second figure. "He is likely to be well-educated, though it's possible that he's a talented hobbyist. He used a risky mind-wiping spell instead of more conventional means. Even when his objective is avoiding leaving evidence in the victim's brain, there are simpler means to erase memory post-mortem. The method of killing was intentionally impersonal which leads me to believe that the subject is socially stunted or otherwise afraid of getting his hooves dirty."

"You two would probably get along well," Shining Armor said, smirking.

Twilight rolled her eyes. "Well, unlike me, the subject is probably male."

"Oh? What makes you say that?"

"Besides statistical likelihood? The image of the so-called 'witness' you mentioned."

"You're suggesting that's the guy?"

"That seems likely. The memetic kill spell is exponentially more difficult to cast over long distances. Facial recognition software can't identify him because he's probably wearing a mask. He seems to be wearing an overcoat, making it impossible to identify his color or brand."

"Of course he is."

"Well, go ahead and tell the chief. I suppose I'll keep digging. To be honest with you, though, I don't think we can catch him with just this. Tell Heartland to call us when there are more dead mobsters or whatever."

Shining Armor winced.

"Star Swirl's beard. That's cold, Twily."

She had shut off the display and was already making her way to the exit.

"Sorry, but I'm not about to lose any sleep over the death of a criminal or two."

* * *

Shining Armor had driven her to the Canterlot Archives on her request. She watched the Royal Guard-owned transport retract its landing gear, hover in midair for a split second, and take off smoothly into the sky. The doors to the lobby slid open for her with a sigh and the dry, air-conditioned air enveloped her as she stepped inside. As she had suspected, information regarding this type of psychological attack was scarce on the Grapevine, forcing her to peruse the ancient paper books stored in the Archives.

Self-serve terminals stood at regular intervals throughout the labyrinthine innards of the facility, but restricted material did not have a barcode and had to be processed by a flesh-and-blood librarian. It took her an hour and a half to find a book that touched on the spell. She lugged it to the front desk, cursing the unintuitive organizational system and analog libraries in general, swearing that were it up to her, all this information would be stored on a remote database somewhere and libraries themselves would be demolished.

"A hundred years' progress since the advent of online data storage and we still dedicate valuable real estate to this. Unbelievable."

She realized she was talking to herself. The only clerk on duty was sleeping at his post. She couldn't really blame him.

"Thank the Princess that _I_ won't ever have to work in a place like this." She knocked on the wood of the table impatiently. The clerk stirred slightly, severing the strand of saliva trailing from the corner of his mouth. The modicum of empathy Twilight felt for him was swiftly evaporating. "_The Sun damn your eyes! Rise and shine, you lout!_"

The shout echoed through the deserted wing of the Archives. The startled librarian nearly fell over backwards in his chair, but by some miracle managed to retain his balance. He adjusted a pair of antique prescription glasses on his snout and cleared his throat before speaking. All told, he recovered from the shock remarkably quickly. She guessed he was used to similar treatment.

"Yes miss, how can I help you," he said impassively. Twilight might have mistaken him for an incredibly realistic automaton had she not seen him sleeping moments ago.

She slammed the aging book irreverently on the polished oak table.

"I'm borrowing this."

He gave the tome a cursory examination.

"_Terrors of the Twelfth Hour_ compiled by Jesse Weatherwick and Ebon Tusk…" he muttered. "This is a restricted volume."

_No shit._

"Yes. You will process it for me."

He sniffed. "Can I see a form of written authorization for this checkout?"

She fished her spellcraft license out of her saddlebag and flashed it at the librarian.

"I'm Twilight Sparkle, student to your monarch, Princess Celestia. Maybe you've heard of her?"

"Oh…" Twilight could see something approaching genuine emotion cloud the young unicorn's face. "My apologies." He entered the appropriate information into the library's digital borrower ledger with a speed and accuracy that suggested he was desperate to end this encounter.

She stepped outside to wait for Shining Armor to return with the transport and take her home. The rain showed no sign of ceasing any time soon.

* * *

The book was damaged; withered pages were missing throughout the tome. The section on memetic kill spells, while present in the contents, was notably absent from the tome proper.

Twilight pushed away from her desk.

_Just my luck, I guess_.

The sun was setting outside, red and orange bleeding into the surrounding skyline, setting the dark cotton clouds ablaze and bathing the suite in gold. The water-logged capital shimmered, drowning out the lights of the various cars and freighters that dotted the roads below and the skies above.

While Canterlot was very technologically advanced in certain ways, Twilight always felt that it was woefully antiquated in others. The ground traffic had become much less congested with the popularization of aerial vehicles, yet the government saw fit to maintain the subway system. Where some buildings were adequately climate-proofed, with windows of adjustable transparency and state-of-the-art temp-control walls, others had to make do with old-fashioned heating and air conditioning. These tended to be the same houses that did not have a proprietary AI and were left with isolated electronics, which were admittedly hack-proof and, therefore, safer…

"Anderson."

"Yes, Miss Sparkle?" asked the hotel.

"Coffee," she demanded, stifling a yawn. "No milk."

"Yes, Miss Sparkle."

There was a low hum in the kitchen as the autobrewer came to life.

…Isolated electronics were certainly safer. But they also tended to make life more arduous.

She heard a soft crackling as the static broom passed over the carpet. Spike was giving the suite its customary once-over.

"So, Twilight," he started as the distant autobrewer fizzled to a slow conclusion. "Where did you and Shining go? I can't remember the last time you were away from the apartment for so long."

She shot him a look.

"That is, uh," he stumbled. "If you don't mind sharing."

Twilight unhooked her steaming mug from the appliance and took a shallow sip. The bitter liquid set her teeth on edge. Its taste and aroma were exquisite by machine standards, though still not quite a match for the brew of any half-decent barista.

She turned her attention back to Spike.

"Nothing too interesting. Getting reacquainted with some of his friends. I took a book from the Archives on the way back to study but, wouldn't you know it, the entire section I was looking for had been torn out." She clicked her tongue in recalled irritation. "Sundamned analog. This certainly wouldn't have happened if the info was anywhere on the feeds."

"Oh man. Was it the only book containing what you were looking for?" asked Spike.

"I don't know. Probably not."

"Maybe you should let the librarians know?"

"No, what good would that—" she stopped. The killer had to have learned the spell somewhere, and it might have been the very book that now lay on her desk. Chances were slim, of course, but it wouldn't do to dismiss a potential lead offhand. She would need to return to the archives and question management about previous borrowers. Presently, she sighed into her coffee. "Thanks Spike, I think I'll do that. You should get some sleep."

As the drake shuffled to his room, Twilight returned to her desk with the coffee hovering steadily in front of her. The sun had nearly set outside, and the star-dotted darkness crept methodically across the heavens like ink spreading through watercolor.

She'd managed to work through two thirds of the steaming mug when the prompt flashed in her peripheral vision.

**Invitation to join private conversation received from Lady_Gaea.**

**Accept? **

_Shit. What does she want now?_

Twilight took another sip from her mug and then stared fixedly into it.

_Fine._

She begrudgingly accepted the invitation. A grid of bright turquoise hexagons briefly obscured her vision before fading from the center outwards. It was a tastelessly flashy loading screen for nothing more than a basic chat room. Twilight tried to blink the lights away ineffectually.

**(19:09)**_ Star-Struck joined the conversation._

**(19:09) Star-Struck: **What is it?

**(19:09) Lady_Gaea: **Sorry. They talked me into it.

**(19:09) Star-Struck: **Excuse me?

**(19:10) Commander_Giblet: **A little bird told us that you were helping the CPD with a murder investigation. That right? You some kinda shitty Sherlock Hooves now?

**(19:11) Star-Struck: **What in Tartarus… I thought I took you off of my contacts list. Gaea, what the fuck is he doing here?

**(19:11) Eu4ia: **o hai im here too

**(19:11) Star-Struck: **Fantastic. I knew this day was missing something. I woke up with a distinct lack of a migraine. Glad you're here to remedy the situation.

**(19:11) Eu4ia:** [less-than sign]3

**(19:12) Lady_Gaea: **I'm really sorry. I told them you were busy, but, you know…

**(19:12) Star-Struck: **This is supposed to be confidential information, damn you. Who spilled?

**(19:12) Commander_Giblet: **Wouldn't you like to know.

**(19:12) Star-Struck: **Gaea. Who tipped you off about all this?

**(19:13) Lady_Gaea: **I'm not sure. The username lookup function couldn't return their online handle or location.

**(19:13) Star-Struck: **What? Why?

**(19:13) Lady_Gaea: **Hey Eu4ia, you're pretty tech-savvy, right? Do you know any reason why Grapevine username lookup would fail?

**(19:13) Eu4ia: **i rly have no idea

**(19:14) Star-Struck: **Oh, come on. You've had to have done stuff like this yourself, right? Connection encryption and so on?

**(19:14) Eu4ia: **nope i got nothin

**(19:14) Star-Struck: **Bullshit.

**(19:14) Lady_Gaea: **Star, please calm down.

**(19:15) Star-Struck: **Oh, what. You barge in and start shoving your noses in my business, and expect me to just passively sit by? Seriously, fuck you guys.

**(19:15) Commander_Giblet: **Oh my Sun, would you just stop bitching. Tell us about this fucking case already!

**(19:15) Eu4ia: **maybe we should leave her alone giblet

**(19:15) Eu4ia: **she seems upset

**(19:15) Commander_Giblet: **You got somewhere you need to be or what?

**(19:16) Eu4ia: **well yea i got this thing tonight

**(19:16) Eu4ia: **but also you know if she doesnt wanna talk about it

**(19:16) **_TheSunAlsoRises joined the conversation._

Twilight felt an involuntary jolt go through her.

_Oh boy._

**(19:16) Eu4ia: **eh

**(19:16) Eu4ia: **whos this

**(19:16) TheSunAlsoRises: **I'd like to talk to Star-Struck.

**(19:16) **_Lady_Gaea left the conversation._

**(19:16) **_Commander_Giblet left the conversation._

**(19:17) Eu4ia: **whered every1 go

**(19:17) Star-Struck: **Eu4ia, please leave.

**(19:17) TheSunAlsoRises: **…

**(19:17) Eu4ia: **o.o

**(19:17) **_Eu4ia left the conversation. _

**(19:18) TheSunAlsoRises: **Good evening, Twilight.

Twilight focused on her cup again. The remainder of the coffee was lukewarm. She downed it.

**(19:18) Star-Struck: **Your Ladyship! It's a pleasure to hear from you. Though, with all due respect, I'm perplexed as to why you would deign to enter a conversation I was having with these commoners instead of calling or e-mailing me directly…

**(19:18) TheSunAlsoRises: **Life in the palace is extraordinarily dull, you know. Mountains of paperwork and red tape, arrogant foreign ambassadors, mindlessly accommodating servants. Exercising my power in any way I can helps alleviate some of my ceaseless ennui, petty though it may seem.

Twilight snorted.

_Petty is right._

**(19:19) Star-Struck: **Not at all. I'm sorry for questioning you. May I inquire as to why you're contacting me?

**(19:19) TheSunAlsoRises: **You may, though that is also a question, so I bid you watch your tongue.

Twilight winced despite herself. In much the same way that one couldn't predict exactly when a drunk has shouted his fill and might get violent, it was often difficult to tell when the Princess's threats and indignation were intended facetiously and when they were genuine. Her subjects found it best to hemorrhage apologies now, lest they hemorrhage actual blood at a public execution later.

**(19:19) TheSunAlsoRises: **Shining has informed me that you are attempting to assist the local police with a criminal investigation. Is this true?

**(19:20) Star-Struck: **Yes, milady.

**(19:20) TheSunAlsoRises: **You recall that it's testing season. Shouldn't you occupy yourself with your studies rather than chase phantoms in the streets?

**(19:20) Star-Struck: **I apologize. I'm just trying to do my part for the city. I feel confident with the material you've assigned me and I'm sure I'll be able to surpass expectations as always.

**(19:20) TheSunAlsoRises: **Arrogance doesn't become you, Twilight. Very well, if this is the extracurricular activity you choose to pursue then it's not my place to try and stop you. But be aware that police-work isn't without its occupational hazards. I leave you to your own devices for now. Do not make me regret this decision.

**(19:20) Star-Struck: **Of course not, milady.

**(19:20) **_TheSunAlsoRises left the conversation._

Twilight stared at the chat log for a time, thinking. She'd expected the Princess to hear about all this, and evidently Shining Armor had told her. She still couldn't say how her online acquaintances caught wind of the investigation though, since Shining had no reason to reveal anything to them. Indeed, she would deem such action out-of-character for the no-nonsense, by-the-book Royal Guard Captain.

She moved to close the chat client when—

**(19:22) **_[user irretrievable] joined the conversation._

**(19:22) [user irretrievable]: **Beg your humblest pardon. I saw you were online and couldn't help myself.

_Who's this joker? Hmm… Is he the one who…_

**(19:23) Star-Struck: **I presume you're the one who tipped off Gaea, Eu4ia and Giblet.

**(19:23) [user irretrievable]: **Yes, that's correct.

**(19:23) Star-Struck: **What the fuck was that for? And how did you know about it? Who are you, exactly?

**(19:23) [user irretrievable]: **I'm afraid that revealing my identity to you would be… counter-productive.

Twilight sat up.

**(19:24) Star-Struck: **Are you claiming that you're the killer? You expect me to believe that?

**(19:24) [user irretrievable]: **You can believe what you wish. Meanwhile, I'd like to talk.

**(19:24) [user irretrievable]: **Canterlot is mostly an administrative city. These lofty streets are home to the main offices of countless banks, supermarket chains, government branches, et cetera. There are clean lines dividing the bourgeois, the privileged upper-class and the migrant workers. Transients typically migrate to the city biannually to cultivate the orchards of mountain olive that grow on the outskirts of the city. This city, the capital, is very well-to-do despite its comparably low working-class population. It saddens me to see that much of the local business owners are presently beneath the callous hoof of the _Bratva_.

**(19:25) [user irretrievable]: **The _Stalliongradzkaya Bratva_—or the Stalliongrad Brotherhood if you prefer—fled to these lands following the collapse of their infrastructure in Stalliongrad due to the interference of Czar Medved II. They extort local businesses under the guise of selling insurance, and as far as organized crime goes, they are not overly noteworthy. Smuggling, drug trade, prostitution rings. Hardly breaking new ground.

Twilight tried to resist the urge to tell the newcomer to shut up.

**(19:25) Star-Struck: **What's the point of this lecture, please? I already know most of this. Are you trying to say that this murder is justified?

**(19:25) [user irretrievable]: **Who am I to say whether a murder is justified? That job clearly falls to the jury, or, in some cases, the Princess.

**(19:25) Star-Struck: **Would you just shut up. Your pseudo-intellectual bullshit is dribbling all over your floor, I'll bet. If you've come to try and convince me to drop the case, tough luck; this is way too interesting for me to pass up. If you've come to gloat… Fine. Get that out of the way. But don't expect me to sit and listen while you recite some tourist brochures and the like. I've got better things to do.

**(19:25) [user irretrievable]: **Hum. I see. In that case, I'll leave you for now. Though… Perhaps you'd prefer to talk face-to-face?

**(19:26) [user irretrievable]: **118 Redlex Avenue. 42nd floor. If you hurry, you may find me there. Then again, you may not. It might not be wise to trust the word of a soon-to-be serial murderer but I'm sure you'll follow your instincts. Otherwise, what sort of detective are you? I hope to talk to you again soon. Until then, I'll take my leave.

**(19:26) **_[user irretrievable] left the conversation._

Twilight blinked once and shut the chat client off.

_Well. It's time to make some phone calls, I think._

* * *

[Author's Note: I can't believe this site won't let me put a less-than sign in my story. What's up with that?]


	3. Brain Cancer District (Part Two)

The city streets are as cold as a morgue, but not quite as sanitary. The police cruiser lands atop one of the skyscraper's touch-down points, spread out about halfway up the structure. The rear gate swings open with a creak and a strike team composed of ten officers trots briskly out into the rain. They are followed by two more ponies; a white-coated youth in traditional Royal Guard garb and a gray, middle-aged stallion wearing a well-used tactical vest and a mustache.

Shining Armor looked over the edge of the platform. Several police-owned land cars were sitting conspicuously around the building, lights alternating red and blue. Twilight was down there somewhere, waiting. To Twilight's chagrin, Heartland and Shining alike firmly opposed putting the young consultant with no combat training into the field. Doubtlessly paraphrasing some strict parent or teacher of yore, Heartland told her she was lucky to be even this close to the scene. Meanwhile, snipers were getting into positions in the surrounding buildings, trying to cover the windows. They all understood that this tip could very well lead nowhere. If the mysterious individual that contacted Twilight was truly the killer, he could easily be trying to divert police attention from his real target. If they were particularly unfortunate, the whole setup could also have been a trap.

According to city records, this building was just another over-priced hotel, though, unfortunately, the proprietary AI could not be reached for a guest list. This lack of communication was echoed later as the pilot tried to get the all-clear to land. Evidently the sprite in charge of the hotel was unavailable. Something was amiss.

The strike team assembled near the entrance. A single operative cut through the rest, turned, and bucked the ornate double door with a single economic kick. There was a loud _crunch_ as the doors gave and the steel locking mechanism splintered through the side. The hinges squeaked in protest as the portal swung inwards. The strike team entered the landing platform lobby with conditioned finesse, sweeping the corners with the sights of their Levitus assault rifles. Heartland nodded to Shining, and the two entered, following on the heels of the team.

Shining noted that there was no alarm raised over the forced entry but couldn't imagine that a modern hotel such as this did not have one installed. As he'd come to expect, the elevators were not working.

Gunshots echoed down the stairway.

Heartland activated the team's broadcast channel on his NOI.

"Graphite! We heard shots fired. Have you encountered hostiles?"

Shining heard the team leader's response clear in his ear.

"Negative. They're coming from higher up."

"Any word from our snipers?" he asked.

A nasally voice rang over the line. "Support unit leader Hawk Eye here. We're seeing what appear to be muzzle flashes four floors above your current position, strike team. Proceed with caution."

"Acknowledged."

As Shining and Heartland approached the point of conflict, the building seemed to shudder with every shot fired. The sharp cracks echoed around the narrow confines of the staircase and picked up momentum on their way down. Shining caught eyes tracking their progress behind not-quite-closed doors, and heard worried muttering from the few tenants that were still in the area.

The strike team had piled in front of the doorway on that fourth floor in much the same way as they did before.

"Your orders, sir?" asked Graphite. His tone betrayed nothing. He could have been waiting on a customer at a local restaurant.

"I'd like to avoid any fatalities if at all possible," said Heartland. "Incapacitator ammo only."

There was a chorus of dry clicking as the autoloaders chambered the ammunition. Incapacitator brand ammunition was standard issue for the Canterlot police force; a brass hollow-point bullet coated in diluted cockatrice paralytic. When it came to raw stopping power, there was no besting it. A far cry from the old, allegedly non-lethal rubber bullet, this one was about as deadly as any standard round, though still preferable to—

A single low-dispersal beam of white cut through the door like a blowtorch through butter. The beam burned through Graphite's neck bloodlessly, leaving his head hanging from his neck by a single cauterized thread. He slumped against the far wall. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. The remaining members of the team leapt for what sparse cover the hallway presented. The walls exploded in a hail of machine gun fire.

Shining Armor dimly registered bits of shouted Stalliongrad dialect coming from the other side of the wall.

Far below, Twilight was startled by a sudden influx of voices on the audio line.

"_Strike leader is down, I repeat, Graphite is down!_"

"We have hostiles! Hawk, thin their numbers!"

"Copy. Support team, fire at will."

There was a distinct hiss of a smoke grenade being detonated, though Shining could not pinpoint who threw it. The deafening chatter of the team's rifles echoed through the building and the bitter scent of cockatrice venom wafted through the air. As he scanned the clouded room, he saw a dazed member of the _Bratva _rushing towards him through the smoke. Combat instinct took over. He pivoted around the attacking unicorn, locking the crook of his knee around the mobster's neck and crushing his larynx.

"You're under arrest," he said superfluously.

The unicorn managed to choke out several syllables before losing consciousness. "You're… with… police?"

Voices sounded from the smoke, voices he recognized as belonging to members of the team.

"West landing, clear!"

"Entrance is clear!"

"Bedroom's clear!"

Something stirred on the floor above; something heavy. Its lumbering gait shook the foundations of the ceiling, dislodging clouds of dust. Shining Armor tracked the footfalls as they gained momentum, racing forward. The team felt, rather than heard, the propulsion drives powering up. A window shattered.

Hawk Eye's voice came to him over the audio line, awash with disbelief.

"I-it's an alicorn! An alicorn just broke through the balcony on the forty-second floor!"

"Say again?" Heartland's voice, strained.

As Twilight looked up from the land car, she saw the figure silhouetted in what little moonlight got through the cloud cover. Even at this distance, its enormous wings were unmistakable. In the next instant, the wings seemed to fold and crumple, and the figure started to drop.

Hawk Eye's voice came over the line again. "The unknown alicorn is falling, repeat, falling to street level."

Shining Armor snapped back to Heartland.

"Shit. Do we have _any _combat-ready units down there?"

"Fifteen armed officers, all jacked into the team broadcasting channel."

Shining activated an audio link with his sister.

"Twilight, stand ba—"

But it was already too late. The alicorn landed hard, crushing the hood of Twilight's car like abused tinfoil. Various collision alerts lit up the console, bathing her in a neon glow. Her panicked voice raced back over the audio link.

"Holy shit, holy _fucking _shit, he's right here, _he's right in front of me_."

The steel flesh of the behemoth alicorn glinted in the ambient red and blue police lights. She heard its joints give off a mechanical whine as it stood straight. A voice erupted from its microphone, heavily modulated.

"Good evening, Twilight. I figured you'd prefer to chat outside beneath the starlit skies, rather than in that stuffy building with the rest of Canterlot's finest."

"It's not a real alicorn," she whispered into the audio link. "It's an armored exoskeleton."

"Pilot!" one of the officers shouted somewhere. "Stand down and exit the combat suit immediately, or we _will _open fire!"

The armor lifted its right leg and violently brought it down again on the scarred hood of the car. Heartland's voice sounded on the broadcast channel.

"Hawk Eye, take the shot."

The sniper rifle's retort blasted through the night like an amplified fire cracker. Something almost imperceptible whizzed by and punctured the head of Twilight's seat.

"Hey, watch where you're firing! You damn near killed me!" she exploded.

"I-I wouldn't miss a stationary target!"

Gunfire erupted in the street as the grounded police officers tried to disable the exoskeleton. Twilight watched as bullets seemed to curve around their foe and bury themselves in their surroundings. Several officers were injured nigh instantaneously without any apparent attack from the armor. She ducked out of the car mere seconds before the windshield and the seats behind it were riddled with stray lead.

"Stop fucking shooting, you numbskulls!" she shouted, taking cover behind one of the other vehicles. "It's an anti-ballistic field!"

"Hold your fire! _Hold your fire, damn it!_" Shining's voice over the broadcast channel.

The deafening cacophony of gunfire ceased, partially due to Shining's orders, mostly due to the fact that the attacking officers were dead or in the process of bleeding out. The armor stepped off the wreckage of the police car and casually began to search the barricades for its target.

"Twilight," it sang. The heavy distortion turned the call into a bloodcurdling screech. "Where are you, dear? And here I was so looking forward to our talk."

Twilight tumbled clumsily from cover to cover in the wake of the machine, trying to stay out of sight. She turned her attention to the audio link as she came to rest behind one of the cars.

"Shining, _please _tell me you guys have brought a beam weapon or two."

There were a few moments of radio silence as her brother consulted with the commissioner.

"Listen very carefully, Twilight. There is a munitions truck parked on the eastern edge of the police cordon. Heartland's entered your DNA sequence into the permissions, so you should be able to open the back without issue. Look for—"

A cool breeze brushed the back of her neck as the car behind her was thrown aside almost effortlessly. She heard the crash as the vehicle landed back to the ground nose-first, some fifty yards away. The armor's altered tones keened in her ears.

"This suit is equipped with thermographic cameras. You can't hide from me."

She turned to look back at the steel alicorn, dumbstruck. Its three electronic eyes whirred as they adjusted focus. It wound up for a swing, oddly slow, deliberate. Her brother's voice sounded in her ears.

"Twilight, _move!_"

And then she was sprinting, the concrete cracking some feet behind her. The ground began to shudder beneath her hooves as the armor unhurriedly pursued. She didn't dare look back. As she leapt and weaved through the barricade she could hear the damage behind her, cars being crushed, hurled with abequine force. Her lungs began to ache, unaccustomed to the exertion and her weak heart beat until she feared it would burst.

She collided ungracefully with the munitions truck, panting, weak in the knees. She quickly wet her hoof with her tongue and swiped it over the DNA reader on the back door. The door slid open, revealing racks of smooth gunmetal within. Her panicked eyes scanned the walls, desperately searching. The heavy steps of the mechanical behemoth drew closer, pounding like detonations in a warzone. At last she made out the sleek, almost iconic profile of a beam gun. A Solaris pistol; small for ease of concealment, short battery life when compared to more expensive models like, say, anything from Æther, and a smooth, waxy design that was more reminiscent of a sex toy than a firearm.

She levitated it from its clasp and gingerly leveled it on the approaching exoskeleton. Or tried to. She'd never had reason to use a weapon before so aiming proved to be a challenge, and death's steady approach did nothing to calm her nerves. Visibly trembling, she attempted to discharge the weapon.

"_Shit! What the fuck_? _The fucking trigger won't fucking budge_! _The gun's jammed or something_!"

Shining Armor's voice rang in her ear again, patient as always.

"Beam weapons don't jam. Just breathe a little. You have to remove the safety."

Under normal circumstances she'd feel stupid, but the adrenaline rushing through her system prioritized other functions. She aimed again, lifted the safety latch and pulled the trigger.

There was no recoil, nor any deafening retort. Some combat veterans described beam weapons as 'unsatisfying to use' for this exact reason; firing one was as easy as flicking a light switch and the effect was similar in appearance.

The first shot went wide, but that was the result of her incompetence rather than that of the field that surrounded the armor. She realigned it with her sights, aiming for center mass, and fired again. She heard a sizzle as one of the exoskeleton's shoulder plates was superheated and began to melt.

The pilot screamed in surprise or pain or both, and the sound was amplified by the distorting microphone. The resulting shriek sent razors straight through her ears and into her brain. She clutched at her head, stumbled, but remained standing. The pilot of the exoskeleton shouted something indistinct—a threat or a curse she was sure—but the ringing in her ears had not subsided and she couldn't catch it.

She watched, still dazed from the auditory shock, as the armor unfolded its wings and swiftly took off into the night sky. One moment it was a hint of reflected light, the next it was gone, swallowed by the nebulous darkness.

And the night was still and silent once more.

* * *

The chairs in the police station badly needed replacing; the worn context mold seat had settled to a flat cushion. She fidgeted in the chair, fruitlessly trying to find a comfortable position.

"Come on, Heartland. Let me go home. I need sleep."

The police commissioner gave her a hard look.

"Not until I hear your side of the story. We've lost nine stallions tonight. Nine. And there's another four in critical condition. And for what? Why did the killer contact you?"

Twilight gestured vaguely, shifted in her seat.

"I don't know, he found out that I was helping the investigation somehow."

"You understand that there are a number of other detectives and consultants working this case," said Heartland. He didn't look tired at all. Twilight suspected he'd keep her here all night if he had to.

"I don't know. Really. I gave you the chat log, what more do you want?"

Shining Armor entered the room, levitating a steaming cup of coffee. He handed it to Twilight and turned to the commissioner.

"Can't this wait until tomorrow?" he asked. "She's not in any condition to be answering questions. She could very well be in shock."

"She's not in shock," Heartland said without looking at the other stallion. "How did he get an exoskeleton with an anti-ballistic field generator? That's very high budget experimental tech."

Twilight gave him a weary smile. "Well. Evidently he is either very rich, or has corporate connections. I'd wager the latter. You remember how the hotel sprite was completely disconnected? Gave him the opportunity to interrupt a _Bratva _meeting without tripping an alarm. Pretty convenient, don't you think?"

"So? He deactivated the AI so that it wouldn't alert the police."

The mare grinned.

"I doubt that very much, commissioner."

"Why's that?"

"Because," she began. Her voice sounded as though she was explaining something to a foal. "Skilled mages seldom make good hackers. Casting complex spells and decking require radically different thought processes. Most magicians are psychologically vested in rational or scientific matters and the physical realm. Deckers, by contrast, are pathologically impulsive and reckless, often content to let their physical bodies atrophy as they lose themselves in the Expanse.

"So," she concluded brightly. "Our perp is not without support. While it's possible that he has friends, I find it much more realistic that he has corporate backing, due to his probable anti-social tendencies and low self-esteem."

Heartland sighed. "Maybe we could have a _real _criminal profiler evaluate your theories."

"Did you read the chat log? That masturbatory pretention, the way he hid behind some trivial historic lecture?"

"He seemed pretty confident in the street," Heartland pointed out.

"Wouldn't you be, if you were packing what he was? And as soon as he got a little singed, he fled. Doesn't reek of confidence to me."

The conversation continued in this fashion for a while. Queries from the commissioner. Irate answers from the mare. It was four in the morning when Shining Armor came in for the second time. His face was set, resolute.

"What is it now, Shining?" asked Heartland.

"It's the Princess," said the captain. "She would like to speak with Twilight. Immediately."

* * *

Two Royal Guards dressed in traditional armor stood watch over the main palace entrance. They were identical in appearance, stance and demeanor, but that's to be expected from two members of a force that was composed almost entirely of bioengineered clone soldiers. Twilight was never quite sure how Shining Armor managed to become the captain lacking the DNA makeup of the rest of the Guard. She would have to ask him another time.

The two Guards stood to attention as she approached with her brother. They entered the palace proper without comment. The palace stayed well-lit throughout the day; even in the early morning, passers-by could see the constant light coming from the windows. The electrical bills must have been staggering, but then, the Royal Family were not the ones who paid the upkeep. She heard the cameras whine as they pivoted to follow their passage.

_Be good inside our hallowed halls._

They found Princess Celestia seated at a refectory table in the dining room, in the company of a positively ancient bottle of red wine. She looked as sharp and radiant as ever and Twilight found herself wondering if the Princess ever slept.

"Good morning, Twilight. Shining." She motioned for them to sit. "Wine?"

Twilight's head was already aching with fatigue. The last thing she needed now was a hangover.

"Your Ladyship's hospitality is much appreciated, but I'll have to pass."

The Princess filled two glasses.

"I insist."

Twilight resignedly watched as Princess Celestia slid one of the glasses in her direction.

"If it pleases Your Ladyship."

She sipped at her glass and waited for the Princess to make her reasons for summoning them clear. Several silent minutes passed.

Finally, Princess Celestia spoke. "I understand that you faced down a combat-ready exoskeleton earlier tonight."

"Well, erm, yes," Twilight stumbled, taken aback by the Princess's directness.

"When I gave you leave to participate in the investigation, I did not expect that you'd be fighting personally."

_Yeah, well, neither did I. But like you said; occupational hazards._

Twilight cleared her throat nervously.

"My apologies. Events spiraled out of our control."

"Oh? Shining tells me that you insisted on being present near the scene, despite all attempts to convince you otherwise."

Twilight resisted the urge to look back at her brother.

"Uh." She inspected her wine glass, looking for a suitable excuse.

"That's alright, you are curious about the world." The Princess gave her a chilling smile. "Perhaps it is time that you began to truly learn for yourself."

She paused for a sip of wine.

"I am hereby relocating you and your assistant to the Ponyville settlement on the edge of the Everfree."

_You've got to be fucking kidding me_.

Abruptly Twilight realized that her jaw had dropped open.

"I. I don't understand. Am I being expelled?"

"Not at all, child. Think of it as a special assignment directly from me. You will continue your studies independently, sending a report of your findings once every week and your brother will visit you twice a week to instruct you in practical self-defense.

"Financially, you will be on your own, save for a small sum of bit chips to get you started. I recommend that you purchase the small library near the center of town. It has fallen into a state of disrepair but I'm sure your organizational skills could get it back to working order."

_Damn it all. She's serious._

"But what about my exams?" tried Twilight. "What about the investigation?"

"Those are no longer of your concern. Gather your belongings. A Royal Guard escort will arrive to your dwelling at noon to transport you."

The Princess raised her glass.

"I call a toast… to your new life in Ponyville."

* * *

**(13:26) **_[user irretrievable] joined the conversation._

**(13:26) Girls-Best-Friend: **How do you fare?

**(13:26) [user irretrievable]: **I could be better. Nearly got killed on my run last night.

**(13:26) Girls-Best-Friend: **By whom? The mob? With the equipment we provided?

**(13:27) [user irretrievable]: **No. The investigator girl, Twilight. She got a hold of a beam weapon and shot me. Got a nasty burn, stings like a motherfucker. I should have killed her when I had the chance.

**(13:27) Girls-Best-Friend: **That wouldn't have been wise. The last thing we need is to draw the attention of the Princess to what we're doing. Regardless, my sources tell me that the Royal Guard have relocated Miss Sparkle to Ponyville an hour ago. You shouldn't have to worry about her any longer.

**(13:27) [user irretrievable]: **Praise the Sun for that. I think she may have been getting close.

**(13:28) [user irretrievable]: **You'll be happy to know that much of the _Bratva_'s administrative unit has been taken care of, save for Fancy Pants. He did not attend last night's meeting.

**(13:28) Girls-Best-Friend: **That's a shame. I'm sure you'll take care of him in due time, however. Keep up the good work, Lucid.

**(13:28) **_Girls-Best-Friend left the conversation._

* * *

The Canterlot Archives stood steadfast and solemn in the mid-afternoon sun.

Shining Armor checked his digital time readout. Twilight would be long gone by now. He sighed. It was a shame that he was unable to see her off, but he'd been filling out paperwork for property damage and police reports with Heartland for the better part of the day. Twilight had told him that morning before they parted ways about her last desperate lead: The previous borrowers of _Terrors of the Twelfth Hour_.

He glanced through the book himself earlier. It provided detailed descriptions and instructions for casting most of the spells mentioned. Chances were good that the memetic kill spell could be learned from the original book, before it was damaged. He frowned. Dangerous times these were, when one could learn a fatal curse from a readily-available volume.

He entered the facility.

A unicorn youth was manning the checkout desk. He was hunched over and appeared to be asleep at his post.

Shining Armor spoke up. "Hey. Buddy. Wake up, I've got some questions for you."

The librarian opened his eyes, yawned, and straightened up.

"Yes sir. How can I help you," he mumbled.

He looked to be about nineteen, with a light blue coat. His brand was a cloud with a large Z inscribed in the center. He wore an antique pair of prescription spectacles, implying that he was too poor to have his eyes surgically repaired. He was almost completely unremarkable except for—

Shining had to do a double take. A large bandage covered the youth's shoulder. The flesh surrounding it was tan and much of the hair had been singed off. The librarian must have caught him looking, moved to cover it.

"Sir?"

Shining locked gazes with the youth.

"What happened to your shoulder, kid?"

The librarian shrugged.

"Stove malfunctioned at home. I tried to fiddle with it a bit, got this burn for my trouble." His voice sounded almost casual.

_Almost._

"I see." Shining nodded. "What was the make of the stove?"

The librarian hesitated.

"Ignam, I think. Sixty five or sixty six. Why's that important?"

Shining shrugged in turn.

"I want to make sure to stay away from that brand, then. Where were you yesterday at approximately eight thirty in the evening?"

His gaze wavered.

"I was here, working."

"Hard worker, I see." Shining made a mental evaluation of his equipment. The weight of the standard issue electric stun prod hung reassuringly from the holster on his hip, but he had no cuffs. If this was going to escalate, he'd have to knock the librarian unconscious. "You got anyone that can vouch for that?"

"Yeah, a couple ponies stopped by during my shift to check out some books. I have their contact information right here, if you want it."

Shining shook his head.

"That's alright, we'll get that later. Could you come wi—"

His peripheral vision registered the librarian's horn lighting up to cast a spell. He vaulted over the table with his prod at the ready before he consciously realized what he was doing. The papers and pens flew after him as he landed on top of the librarian. He held the librarian down with a grappling spell and flicked the switch on the prod; it buzzed to life eagerly. The librarian's horn abruptly winked out as the stun prod connected with his flesh. Shining brought the prod down over and over until the struggle drained from the librarian's body.

Satisfied that his suspect had been fully incapacitated, Shining Armor stood up and sighed. It wasn't much of a fight, but he hadn't expected the librarian to have any combat training anyway.

_Unbelievable. Call it serendipity, I suppose. Who in Tartarus is this kid?_

An insistent voice in the back of his head whispered that this wasn't right, this was way too easy. He shrugged it off irritably.

The clouds were beginning to clear as he hauled the unconscious unicorn to the transport on his back. The city continued about its day, blissfully unaware. He found himself wishing that Twilight was with him.

A flock of birds flew in a sloppy V-formation overhead. Heading south. Ponyville-bound.


	4. On the Subject of Hedonism (Part One)

She felt the music wash over her. Distorted saxophone warbling over the classical bass and piano. Some pre-industrial vocalist whose name she couldn't be bothered to remember piped in excitedly. Her head felt like it was filled with cotton and she couldn't quite make out what the lyrics were. When she asked the DJ what the genre was, the bespectacled mare laughed and told her it was something called "electro-swing".

The needle pierces her artery and she feels a tickle as the substance is forced into her veins. The room looks like it's underwater, the geometry slides apart into nonsense. Admiring the view, she becomes peripherally aware that a stallion is hitting on her. His face is a caricature swimming in her vision, elongated snout, small, beady eyes, and enormous buck teeth. She chortles, breaks into hysterical laughter. There are strange eyes on her, the gaze of ponies she doesn't know.

_Well, why'd you invite them then, you idiot?_

Had she invited all of them? It seemed like a few too many, if she was perfectly honest with herself. Abruptly, the psychedelic coursing through her system makes her realize that she doesn't really care.

_This is pretty good shit._

She tries dancing, but her movement is sluggish and clumsy with the high; she collides with several bodies, one of them looking almost as intoxicated as she is. She chuckles to herself, shoves her way through the crowd. There are yells, but they seem so distant and insignificant. She disregards them.

In the privacy of one of the rooms in the back, a fellow party-goer offers her a bottle of eye-drops, claiming that they're some kind of nervous stimulant. She regards the bottle with a near-suicidal lack of suspicion and clutches it.

_Seize the day and all that._

Some time later, she finds herself hunched over the toilet. She's freezing down to her bones and the vomit comes in short bursts of agony. It's as if she's immobilized, just waiting to drown in her own puke.

_No. No, this is all wrong. I shouldn't be feeling like this until tomorrow morning. _

She carefully pulls up the blinds from the bathroom window. Harsh sunlight streams in and stabs her in the eye sockets.

_Well, shit. It _is _tomorrow morning._

She shuts the blinds again, blinking blearily in the darkness.

_Sundamned sun._

* * *

She found an unfamiliar stallion sleeping in her bed. The floral designs on the sheets didn't much complement his appearance. She put her forelegs on his shoulders and shook until he awoke. He shifted, looked at her through crusted eyes. Grinned.

"That was some party, wasn't it? I dunno how you do it, Pinkie."

"And who are you supposed to be," she demanded.

The grin melted off his face.

"I'm uh, I'm Rivers. Don't you remember? Last night, we—"

"Party's over, Rivers," she interrupted, being less than eager to hear about her latest exploits. "It was super great to see you I'm sure, but it's time that you were on your way. Don't you think? I think so."

"But, but I thought—"

"_Get out before I call the cops._"

Downstairs, half finished bottles of alcohol were strewn about the tables and floor. A slice of red velvet cake sat on the edge of the counter, surrounded by assorted pastries. Someone had spilled something sticky in the dead center of the floor; the site was encrusted in crumbs and dirt.

Pinkie opened the fridge and pulled out a can of bromantane soda. The pianist fingers built into her forehooves easily clenched the pin of the can and popped it open. Her head began to clear somewhat as she took greedy gulps of the fizzing liquid.

As the name of the enhancement implied, the bionic digits were originally designed with musicians in mind. These days however, they were mostly sought out by deckers who did not have the funds or the inclination to purchase a neuro-optical interface. With practice, the pianist fingers cooperated with keyboards much faster and more accurately than bare hooves.

The antique clock hanging over the mantelpiece told her that it was a quarter to nine. There was much time to kill yet. She dug her keyboard out of the upstairs drawers and connected it to a bright orange display strip, which she fit with some difficulty around her eyes and into the twin ports implanted in her temples.

_Like threading a needle without being able to see the needle. _

She'd got the keyboard, a set of strips, the implants and the pianist fingers as a discount bundle from Material Utilization before they went out of business. They threw in a cheap facial change and rebranding for free, and Pinkie—on the run from the Ponyville authorities at the time—gladly accepted. It was a purchase of dubious quality. Her new brand was a stock image of three balloons and her new forehead bore a discernible logo from a dead company.

The Grapevine emblem flashed on the display strip as she powered it on. The news bulletin scrolled across at a leisurely pace. There were a few new articles regarding a border dispute between the gryphons and the desert-dwellers, the revised proposal to colonize the moon, and the successful landing of a colony barge onto the surface of Artemis II. As always, there were also several pages worth of periodicals and opinion pieces but she never read those.

A forum section appeared as she pressed the corresponding key.

**Welcome, Eu4ia!**

**New Thread: **Technical issues by EvaDecima

**New Thread: **Update 17.66 by Admin

**New Thread: **Recycling old hardware by Lovelace

**New Thread: **New data from Leberica honeypot by *Elwood

**New Thread: **Please assist by Sweet-gel

**New Thread: **Urban development patterns by UNLEADED

Pinkie tutted.

_Just because it's a forum _board _doesn't mean it has to be so _boring._ Let's liven it up a bit, shall we?_

She flexed her fingers and grinned.

* * *

The phone rang somewhere in the depths of the pile of clothing she'd left at the front desk of the establishment. The white mare groaned, reluctantly rose from the bubbling pool of mineral water and donned a lavender-scented bathrobe. The sibling spa owners looked at her questioningly and set aside the luxury-grade shamditioner.

"Sorry, girls," said Rarity, running a hoof through her soaking mane. "You know how it is. I can't afford to just turn off the phone, after all; it could be important."

_But realistically, one of the interns probably just spilled coffee over a console again._

She strode towards the entrance with the grace and smug self-assuredness of a panther and levitated the device to her ear.

"Yes, what is it, Eiffel?" she asked into the mic, managing to hide her irritation behind a mask of passivity. "You know that Tuesday is my spa day, don't you?"

"I apologize, madam. This is impor—" The stallion caught himself midsentence. "Erm. I expected you'd want to hear this immediately."

She ignored the slip.

"All right. Out with it, then."

The line was silent for a few moments.

"We found Binary in his house this morning, after failing to get a hold of him on the company network," said Eiffel. "He took a leg-mount and painted the walls with his brains."

"Oh dear. Binary is dead?" She activated her neuro-optical interface and checked the corporate news section of the Grapevine compulsively. "Are you certain that this is a genuine suicide?"

Her company, Carousel Industries, had a great deal of competitors. Sometimes, her business rivals could get a little overzealous in the pursuit of their goals. Assassinations of high-ranking company officials were alarmingly common and often difficult to trace to the source. Carousel security caught three corporate spies, mercifully before they could pilfer valuable assets, in the span of the past two months. These periods of high activity came and went with the approaching releases of new products and deadlines.

There was a time that quality assurance teams worked independently and could pursue multiple contracts from multiple clients, but that was no longer the case; it simply wasn't safe. The honor system wasn't a viable option for keeping data and intellectual property secure.

In spite of this trustless new age of commerce, rather than execute the agents, Rarity handed them over to be processed by the Ponyville police force. An associate of hers, one Sapphire Shores, summarized it best: _Take nothing personally. It's only business. _

"The psychosurgeons have analyzed the remains and concluded that a suicide attempt was likely in his condition, yes," said Eiffel. "He was suffering from a severe serotonin deficiency, he was an insomniac and a chronic smoker. His financial situation didn't help."

"Where did Binary dig up a leg-mounted cannon?" asked Rarity. She could almost see the stallion shrug on the other end of the line, despite the video being disabled. "He didn't have a license to carry a firearm when we screened him."

"It's close to impossible to account for independent dealers, madam," said Eiffel. "We've lost our head datarat. It will be difficult for our Canterlot operative to continue his mission without Binary's assistance."

"I am aware." She shrugged off the bathrobe and struggled into her dress shirt and waistcoat. The starchy texture chafed on her skin after her soak in the mineral water. "Do we have any recent applicants registered on our list?"

Eiffel hesitated. "Not recent as such, no. But there are a few old entries. I'll have the recruiters look over their résumés immediately."

"Don't bother." She pulled her everleather horseshoes over her feet. "I'll be choosing which applicants to interview personally."

"But madam—!"

The silver insect-lens glasses came down over her eyes.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Eiffel. Our current mission in Canterlot is being conducted in secret; even inside Carousel, few employees are aware of our actions in the capital. The recruiters have not been informed and so, don't have any idea about the skill-set I'm looking for."

"That's true…" Eiffel paused. "Please be careful; deckers are notoriously temperamental."

"Duly noted. Though I _did _put up with Binary for three years, remember."

She cut the call.

* * *

The sun had reached its peak and savagely bore down on the Everfree as Pinkie approached Zecora's lab. The forums have, as always, proved to be an entertaining distraction but she managed to tear herself away from the Grapevine after a few hours. There was an important item on her agenda this evening and she needed to be properly dosed up; withdrawal symptoms would decimate any chance for success. The old bamboo door looked liable to collapse in on itself as she knocked. She always wondered how the zebra alchemist kept herself warm in the winter months.

The zebra had settled out in the Everfree when she moved in because the territory fell outside of the Ponyville Police Department's jurisdiction. Here, she was free to deal a wide assortment of mind-altering substances to an eager audience, consequence-free. The whole of the Everfree technically belonged to the Woodworth & Sons Lumber Company, but Zecora's rent barely scratched her profits.

A single camera was suspended over the door, comically anachronistic, clashing violently with the rustic hut. The door swung open and Pinkie saw the alchemist waiting in the frame, one spreadgun-strapped foreleg leveled steadily on her.

"Pinkamena. I see you have returned," Zecora chanted. "Pray tell me, should I be concerned?"

"Concerned?" Pinkie repeated, trying to sound puzzled. "No! Nope! Of course not! I'm just looking for one more dose of that nepenthe stuff, just for tonight."

Zecora narrowed her eyes. "You already owe more than you could ever repay/ you'll have no more 'till your debt is paid all the way." She jerked the spreadgun once, to punctuate the point. "What's more, if the funds aren't received in due course/ then I will stop by to collect them in force/ you should be wary of what you don't give/ remember, dear girl, I know where you live."

"Woah Zeeke, that won't be necessary," said Pinkie, eyeing the spreadgun nervously. "It's payday. This next job will definitely clear us, I swear, with, with—" she stammered as the automatic pump chambered a slug, "_with interest, okay?_"

The alchemist raised a quizzical eyebrow, fractionally lowered the leg-mount.

Pinkie tried again. "Listen, I'm freelance, okay? Sometimes it takes a while for the paychecks to come through. But I've got a big job tonight with a big payoff. I'll be set for a couple of months at least, it's gonna be great. So I'll square the debts. But I need a hit tonight or everything will go to shit. Just, like, call it a, what's that thing. An investment. How's that?"

Zecora retreated into her hut. Peeking in, Pinkie saw her take something very similar to a cigarette from a plastic dispenser. A homemade lighter ignited the tip of the tube as the zebra took the other end in her mouth. The fumes coming off the tube smelled decidedly of something other than burning tobacco. She blew the smoke in Pinkie's direction, seemingly reaching a decision.

"I will measure out material for a single shot/ and you will bring me payment without a second thought/ understand that if you neglect/ I'll come tomorrow evening to collect."

Pinkie grinned. "Sure, sure, I got it." The unspoken supplement to the conditions was that if she tried to run, Zecora would have her hunted to the ends of the earth. But of course, she wouldn't try to run; she was far too dependent on the zebra and her stock.

Zecora produced several packages from the cellar: a pocket-sized plastic bag filled with an earthy brown powder, a syringe with a vial filled with a transparent purple liquid, and a brightly-colored caterpillar contained in a tiny iron cage. The powdered mandragora, the constricting nightshade extract and the Stygian sixty-leg came together to form the family of nepenthe, a much-sought group of recreational substances. The very sight of them made Pinkie shiver.

She shoveled the items into a featureless tote bag which she hung around her neck.

"Don't worry, Zeeke," she said to the zebra, rubbing her forehooves together. "You'll get your money. Cross my heart and hope to fly."

* * *

**You have (1) unread message.**

**[read] Report Requested**

**[read] Revised Company Policy**

**[read] Misplaced Password**

**[read] Question about product**

**[unread] [NO SUBJECT]**

Starburst tried to focus on the window in front of him, but his eyes wandered unprompted to the time readout in the bottom corner. It's been several hours since he confessed his feelings to the attractive young secretary in the office across the hall. Starburst couldn't muster the nerve to tell her face to face or to call her, so he'd sent her an e-mail instead; it was far easier to read confident than sound or look it. And still, there was no response. He hoped she wasn't ignoring him. He could handle a rejection, but silence was almost too much for him to bear. He needed to distract himself, yet the motivation wouldn't come.

Finally, he clicked the fifth message inside the company inbox.

**From: **Prince-Wilted-Tulip

**To: **Al'zarith, Ashes and Dust, Barber_Paradox, Carousel Industries, Doctor_Feel-Good, Flim/Flam Enterprises, Grando, Ivory, Lovelace, O^OOoo, Pregnant Silence, Troughblesome, Webster

**Subject: [NO SUBJECT]**

**Message: **Greetings, friend.

My name is Wilted Tulip and I am a former prince of the city-state of Cimmeria. as you may be aware, I have been exiled from the state following allogations of poor budgeting under the supervision of the parliament. I require your assistance in transferring my liquid assets (worth around 450 million Equestrian bits) to a bank in New Leonopolis, where I intend to take shelter for the time being. New Leonopolis does not accept long-distance transfers from Cimmeria, so with your permission I'd like to temporarily move the money to an Equestrian account (yours), to facilitate a second transfer to my destination. You will recieve a financial compensation of 10% for this commission—that is 10% of 450000000.00 EB. Please respond as promtly as you are able.

Thank you for your cooperation.

**End message**

Starburst closed the window and looked at the time readout again before he could stop himself.

_Would that life was so damn easy, man_.

* * *

Their van came to a stop several blocks away from the Carousel Industries office building. Comet Tail pulled on the antique parking brake with his horn, locking the vehicle in place, and twisted his neck to look at the rear seats. Pinkie Pie was snickering, obviously doped. Comet rolled his eyes.

"Well I'm glad at least one of us is having a good time," he muttered just loud enough for the others to hear.

Sitting opposite Pinkie, the pale pegasus rubbed her eyes wearily.

"Is this a fucking _joke_?" she burst out. "We're doing this while she's high? Are you dipshits _trying_ to get caught?"

The muscular, brown-coated stallion named Coconut shifted in the passenger seat.

"Who's the new girl?" he asked Comet.

"Says her name's Spring Skies."

"'Ey, Spring," Coconut called over his shoulder. "Shut the fuck up."

"_Excuse me?_" Spring Skies flared, leaned forward. "Listen here—"

"Relax, baby," said Pinkie, smiling vacantly. "I do my best work when I'm altered." She took another violent snort of the brown powder Zecora gave her. Her nostrils had evidently dried out from the abuse; one of them was bleeding badly, the drops falling into the bag and mixing with the contents.

Spring looked at the bag, her distaste manifesting as an ugly frown. "Is that… is that mandrake? Are you taking _nepenthe? _That shit can put down a sundamned bull."

Pinkie gave her a lopsided grin.

"I'm not a bull."

Already, the world outside was rolling in her vision. The hill they parked on appeared to grow and shrink, the steepness of the slope alternating every few seconds. The buildings curved over the street, their peaks meeting overhead. Pinkie unlocked her door and stepped outside, savoring the bite of the crisp night air in her lungs.

She opened the alchemist's tiny cage, and grasped the squirming caterpillar between her fingers. As the others stepped out of the vehicle, she popped the creature into her mouth and crushed it between her teeth. Spring Skies groaned in disgust as her own hoof flew involuntarily to her mouth. Coconut grabbed a box of tissues from a compartment in the front and calmly gave it to Pinkie.

"Plug up your nose. We don't need you leaving your DNA all over the place."

Her senses began to sharpen as her body assimilated the sixty-leg poison. She became aware of the sensation of blood seeping from her nose—warmth collecting, dripping to the pavement—and took the tissue box gratefully. A car alarm went off somewhere in the distance, amplified by her enhanced hearing. The dark of night grew less absolute, dissolved somewhat. The various details of the surrounding architecture—cracks, peeling paint—became more evident. The imperfections leaped out from the darkness like a desperate mugger.

She heard the other three pull various odds and ends from the back of the van. Coconut strapped on a back-mounted machine turret and two leg-mounts with Comet Tail's help. The unicorn himself took a Levitus silenced shard pistol, loaded with star spider poison. As the stealth specialist, he didn't need as much firepower as Coconut, but he took several corrosion grenades as a contingency measure. Spring Skies strapped a leg-mounted burst rifle to her right foreleg and pocketed two multitools. Everyone save for Pinkie took a pair of night-vision goggles.

Copious amounts of hair gel, to leave nothing for the forensic investigators. Ski masks, full-body sport jumpsuits; practical, if not stylish.

At last, Pinkie Pie reached for the tube of constricting nightshade extract, and filled the syringe with its contents. She lightly flicked the needle several times and, biting her lip, buried it in a convenient artery. Warmth spread through her veins radiating from the point of the injection, and her ears registered a faint ringing that took a few seconds to subside.

"You ready?" asked Comet Tail. Her altered perception of time made his voice sound deep and sluggish.

She pulled the keyboard from her saddlebag and made several lightning-fast keystrokes, activating a sonar program. The progress bar displayed on the strip covering her eyes felt like it took a decade to fill, even though she knew from her trial runs that in real time the process only took four and a half seconds.

A map of the network appeared on the display strip, a complicated spider-web of neon connections of various colors and shades. Close to the center of the expansive map she picked out a single icon among hundreds, this one of a classic power plug. The outer axons of the web, the ones bridging it to the rest of the Expanse, were colored a bright orange to signify the presence of a firewall.

Given Carousel's budget, it was nearly impossible to break into the network from the outside. She'd sent a custom Trojan disguised as a spam message to the company's Public Relations department earlier that day to prepare for the raid. The clerk on duty probably deleted the message as soon as he saw the contents, but the Trojan would have buried itself in the network by then. Pinkie had rigged the message to discretely auto-install the malicious program as soon as it was opened.

Presently, she connected to the Grapevine and made a blank post on the general board. The other users would be annoyed she knew, but she'd grown accustomed to their ire and maybe they've grown accustomed to her antics. It couldn't be avoided in any case, because the Trojan needed a trigger. She couldn't interact with it directly while outside of the firewall, so she programmed it to activate upon her next post on the forums.

Something happened to the network map, something that an untrained eye would easily miss. One of the countless dozens of the outer connections faded from orange to a chalk-white.

It would take the proprietary AI a split second to recognize the disturbance and investigate, but Pinkie, adequately energized by the constricting nightshade, was already racing through the network, bouncing her connection from one machine to the next. Her pianist fingers were a blur as they danced on the keyboard and then, in an instant, she had access to the generator interface.

The password cracker went to work to grant her access to the maintenance commands. Various nodes began turning a cyan blue on the map as the AI checked each one for signs of intrusion. They were changing at an alarming speed—Pinkie counted at least ten a second—and they were closing on the path she'd recklessly broken in through.

As the diagnostic wave swiftly drew closer, the cracker blinked red, signifying that a successful password attempt had been made.

**Welcome, Admin.**

**Access maintenance commands:**

**Troubleshooting**

**Restart system server**

**Lock system**

**Shut down**

**Log off**

Pinkie smiled triumphantly and brought her finger down on the enter key.

* * *

Sweetie Belle was being childishly unreasonable, as usual.

"_Please_, Rarity? _Cavaliers of Lesbos _will only be in theaters for another week! Would you _please _take me to see it?"

Rarity took a drag from her cigarette holder and glanced over the list of job applications on the holographic screen of her office computer. Even with the introduction of the neuro-optical interface, most companies kept their data on in-house machines. This offered the illusion of security, even though copying corporate data to a portable device was a simple task.

"I'm sorry, Sweetie. I'm afraid that I'm a little preoccupied right now." Strictly speaking, this wasn't true; the number of applications for a datarat position was sorely wanting. Hopefully Sweetie Belle wasn't perceptive enough to notice the sparse list of documents displayed on the hologram. Rarity stubbed her cigarette out on an ashtray cut from artificial diamond. "In any case, we're subscribed to the VIP membership plan at Nightfall Cinema, remember? You could watch the film on your NOI any time you want."

"That's not the point!" Sweetie Belle ran up to the desk and tried to lean over it but her petite stature foiled the attempt. "I hardly ever get to see you anymore, and mum and dad are always busy."

Rarity gave Twinkleshine an imploring look. The nanny hastily put one of her forelegs around Sweetie Belle.

"Come along, deary. Miss Rarity looks really busy right now. If you like, we could get the film on one of the screens at home for you to watch with her when she is available. How about it?"

Sweetie shrugged off the nanny's embrace.

"You're always like this! All you do is hide behind your paperwork and brush me off."

She kicked at the desk, though a little more vigorously than she intended. The ashtray tipped over the edge, spilling the dust and the cigarette butts on the carpet.

Twinkleshine grabbed hold of Sweetie Belle, more forcefully this time.

"That is _enough_, Sweetie. I'm really sorry, Miss Rarity, I was hoping I'd taught her better than this."

Rarity looked up from the screen. Her eyes were invisible behind the silver insect lenses making it difficult to gauge if she was angry. Twinkleshine felt herself wither beneath her impassive gaze. Rarity shifted her focus to Sweetie Belle who looked back resentfully.

"You too will inherit Carousel Industries when you're older, just as I did. And make no mistake; you'll understand then why I'm doing the things I am. Running a company isn't a game."

Sweetie Belle's glare could have welded lead.

"Yeah, right. I'm sure your weekly spa sessions are very draining for you."

Rarity opened her mouth to speak, but realized that she did not have a retort ready. She'd thought that only Eiffel knew about her self-indulgent Tuesday visits.

Perhaps Sweetie Belle understood that she'd hit a nerve and chose to quit while she was still ahead.

_Maybe she's learned a few things from me, after all._

Or she just wanted the last word. Regardless, she allowed Twinkleshine to lead her away without sparing her older sister another look. The sliding door shut behind them and Rarity was left alone, ruminating in the deathly silence of the sound-proofed office.

The dust from the ashtray had settled on the dark carpet like dandruff or something equally unseemly. Rarity's hoof hovered over her desktop pager for a few seconds as she considered notifying a janitor. Then, Sweetie Belle's words echoed accusingly in her head and she sighed, standing up from her desk. There was a vacuum cleaner sheltered somewhere inside her closet, probably almost pristine from lack of use. The administrative AI's synthetic tones sounded from the overhead speakers as she dug through the dark alcove.

"Madam. I don't want to cause any undue alarm, but it appears that one of our firewalls has just been forcibly disabled."

This gave her pause.

"Oh? Do you think it could be a malfunction?"

"I am running a full diagnosis of the network as we speak."

Given Carousel's expensive security measures, it was unlikely that the downed firewall was the result of an intrusion attempt, so Rarity continued searching for the vacuum.

Something killed the lights.

She stumbled out of the closet to see that the building had gone dark. The only illumination in her office came from the lights of downtown Ponyville shining through her window. There was a hum as the emergency circuit came online; dim secondary lights flickered on, lending the silhouettes of the objects in her office a suggestion of detail. The holographic computer screen appeared over her desk once more, but it was flickering and isolated from the company network.

_The network's almost certainly down anyway. Looks like someone managed to shut off the central power generator. _

The building had probably gone into lockdown, as per the blackout procedure. Rarity wasted no time in retrieving her Levitus pistol from a nearby drawer, pulling out her phone and contacting the police. The voice of an emergency operator sounded in her ear as she moved to pry her office door open.

"You've reached the Ponyville Police Department, how can we assist you?"

She stifled a satisfied grunt as the door gave, allowing her access into the hall beyond.

"This is Rarity of Carousel Industries speaking. Our caretaker AI reported that one of our firewalls was deactivated shortly before someone broke into the network and cut the power. I believe that this is the prelude to a raid and request immediate police support."

"Understood. We will dispatch several cruisers to your location. Please stay on the line, miss."

Rarity unzipped a crisis kit suspended on a nearby wall and took out a flashlight.

"I can't do that. Your prompt assistance will be appreciated, however."

She ended the call and started walking briskly through the darkened halls. Sweetie Belle was still in the building somewhere.


	5. On the Subject of Hedonism (Part Two)

"Are we sure this blackout's gonna last?" asked Spring Skies while her multitool cut through the glass of one of the ground floor windows.

"Thecentralpowergeneratorislocatedonthebasementfloorbehindawholebunchofblastdoors," said Pinkie. The nightshade had accelerated her speech patterns, making it difficult to follow what she was saying. "Thenetwork'sshutoffnowsothey'llhavetoheaddownandrestartthegeneratormanuallyandthatwilltakeawhile!"

Spring Skies looked at Comet Tail questioningly. The unicorn shrugged.

"Act under the assumption that we have a half-hour before the electricity comes back on."

The blade compass completed its circuit around the window and was retracted back into the multitool. Comet Tail levitated the cut glass out of the window frame and set it gently on the pavement.

"I'll take point, scouting ahead as we go," he told the others. "Coconut, you stay behind me but don't fire unless a direct confrontation is unavoidable. Those cannons will alert the entire building if you use them. Pinkie is unarmed, so she'll keep to the rear. Spring, your job is to keep her out of harm's way. Understood?"

Coconut and Spring Skies nodded. Pinkie tapped on the ground impatiently.

"Yeahyeahyeahweallgetitokaylet'sjustgetonwithitalready."

* * *

Rarity ran into a dozen or so confused office and maintenance workers as she trotted through the gloomy corridors. She deflected any questions regarding the nature of the blackout and told them to hole up wherever they could and lock the doors until the electricity returned. Few of them had seen Sweetie Belle and Twinkleshine, but those that had pointed her to the lower floors of the building.

There had been no sign of any physical intrusion as of yet, but she didn't let down her guard. A single security officer trailed behind her as she descended the stairs. They were nearing the second floor when they heard muffled gunshots.

"Madam, maybe it's best that you return to your office," advised the security guard.

An explosion erupted somewhere as she started racing down the stairs.

* * *

Comet Tail was down. The three security officers took cover behind the receptionist's counter, firing blindly as they cowered. Coconut pulled the unicorn out of the line of fire while Spring Skies shouted obscenities at their aggressors.

"Snap out of it, man. That shot barely grazed you," said Coconut, patching the side of Comet's neck with an easy-application bandage.

Comet was lying on the floor, trembling.

"Shh—shit. I think these bullets are paralytic. Basilisk or… cockatrice venom. I c—can't move."

Coconut peeked out of cover for a few seconds to trade fire with the officers. This was going nowhere. He gestured for Pinkie to come over. She tumbled across to him, glancing around wildly.

"What'supchief?"

"I'm not equipped to use these, Pink. You mind?" he said, jerking his head toward the corrosion grenades strapped to Comet's utility belt.

"Howdotheywork?"

Coconut groaned in exasperation.

"It's like a… like a soda can, okay? You jerk the pin and throw."

Pinkie wrapped her fingers around one of the grenades, pulled its safety pin and threw it towards the security guards without more than a moment's hesitation. It rebounded against the far wall, landing behind the officers' cover.

_Splash._

The air filled with a terrible hissing, overtaken by hysterical screams. An acrid smell stung Pinkie's nostrils and made her eyes water, the smell of battery acid mixing with road kill. The sixty-leg poison surging through her system amplified her sensory stimulus to the point where she could almost taste the corrosive payload in the back of her throat. It took some effort not to retch into her mask. She felt her excess energy begin to wane in the wake of the olfactory distress, leaving her vaguely fatigued. She estimated that it would take another fifteen to twenty minutes for the crash to fully set in.

Spring rolled up and cautiously peeked over the half-melted counter. Mercifully, her night-vision goggles spared her the grisly details of the corrosion grenade's handiwork.

"All clear," she called to the others. "That grenade sure did a number on them."

Comet Tail shuddered.

"Please…" His breath came in short gasps. "H-help me."

Coconut cocked the spreadgun strapped to his left foreleg, and aimed it point-blank at Comet's head, biting down on the discharge lever.

"Wait," said Spring Skies. "Wait a second. What are you—?"

The spreadgun coughed, and Comet's head was reduced to a cracked cranium holding teeth, bone shards and liquefied brains like gruel in an unwashed bowl.

Spring Skies swung up her burst rifle in Coconut's direction.

"W-what the _fuck_ was that? You gonna kill the rest of us too, asshole?"

He gave her a caustic glare.

"What would you prefer I'd done? Lug his quadriplegic ass along? You heard him; paralytic rounds. Without a mechanical respirator he'd have suffocated inside a few minutes anyway. And I couldn't leave 'im here intact for security to find, right? 'Cos they'd get our identities from his dead neurons and it'd all be over." He stepped over Comet's corpse and started toward the door into the next department. "So get with the fucking program and come on. More of them are probably on the way now that this stealth BS went over so damn well."

As if on cue, a police siren began to echo in the distance.

The doorknob didn't budge and the lock appeared to be analog. For a split second, Coconut thought he heard voices on the other side of the door.

"Stop your pouting and get over here, Spring. I need that multitool."

Spring Skies bit back an angry retort and engaged the multitool's skeleton key mode. A dual pick emerged from the tool and began probing the lock in an automated sequence. After a few hushed seconds, there was a click and the door swung open. The area beyond was the bottom to a service staircase, a grimy space with countless pipes and wires protruding from the walls. Steam was being steadily dispersed into the air, as if something in the plumbing had recently burst. Coconut could have sworn that he heard voices here. Almost compulsively, he opened the bright red fire hose compartment built into the wall. A unicorn filly of maybe twelve years of age tumbled out of the narrow recess. A scream erupted from behind the stairs before the party had time to question the child's presence here.

"Get away from her, you hoodlums!"

The mare came fast and vicious, swinging a dislodged pipe with a pressure meter still attached to one end. The heavy implement connected to the side of Coconut's head, staggering him. Muttering a string of expletives, Coconut regained his footing, raised the spreadgun and shot the mare once in the foreleg. She collapsed, weeping softly on the floor.

"_Nanny!_" The child brushed past Pinkie and wrapped herself around her fallen escort. "Nanny 'Shine, p-please _please _be okay!"

"Who are these two?" asked Spring Skies.

"Who the fuck cares?" Coconut seethed, leveling his spreadgun on the couple.

"Woah, woah, woah, hold it, bud." Pinkie pressed herself in front of the primed firearm. "I did my research. The girl is the CEO's _sister_,I'm almost positive. Don't you think that might be worth something to us, if, you know, you don't immediately shoot her?"

"What, this kid?" Coconut asked. "Seriously?"

Pinkie's head drooped in something similar to assent.

Despite the intense headache building around his temples, Coconut smirked.

"Well, well."

* * *

The halls were littered with bodies. Rarity kept a handkerchief to her nose as she advanced, to lessen the stench of cockatrice venom and voided bowels. The intruders had come prepared. She wagered they brought some way of seeing in the dark, giving them an edge over the unsuspecting security force. She stood now at the scene of the most sickening of the killings yet, three guards resting behind a heavily damaged counter. Their bodies were covered in gruesome chemical burns. In some cases, charred bone was visible through the damaged skin and muscle. The door to the service staircase had been forced open and steam spilled out into the lobby.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket.

"Rarity speaking."

"Madam, we have a situation here." It was Eiffel.

Rarity moved through the service staircase access. Her heart skipped a beat as she saw Twinkleshine prone in a pool of blood.

"…The intruders have taken Sweetie Belle hostage, haven't they?"

His tone sounded hollow through the speaker.

"Yes, madam. They refuse to issue their demands until you are present in person."

Rarity could still feel the weak beating of Twinkleshine's heart on her neck. Wasting no time, she took her handkerchief and wrapped it around the nanny's bloody foreleg. Some antiseptic would have been ideal, but there was none within easy reach and no time to run and get some.

"Where shall I meet them?"

"They've barricaded themselves in the southern offices on the eighth floor. The guards and I have secured the surrounding perimeter."

"Alright. I'm on my way."

* * *

The wailing chorus of police sirens had climbed several decibels by the time the mare in charge finally arrived. Evidently, the Carousel security force was stalling the police downstairs for fear that Coconut would shoot the filly once the authorities got involved. It was a reasonable concern, noted Spring Skies as she looked uneasily at the stallion. There was a spreading wet spot on his ski mask where the escort had hit him, and his eyes were twitchy and unfocused. Spring was worried that he might discharge his arms and kill the child by accident, even without encouragement.

Her relief may have almost been visible when the white unicorn knocked on the office door. Perhaps that was also the case for the filly, but it was hard to say given that she hadn't said a word since parting from her escort. If it weren't for the occasional sniffle, one could be forgiven for not even noticing she was there.

They ushered the unicorn in quickly and efficiently, making sure that Coconut and the filly were outside the line of sight from the open doorway.

The child jumped at the sight of her older sister, nearly making Coconut blow her head off.

"Rarity!" she cried. "I'm… sorry about before. They hurt Nanny 'Shine! I think she m-might be…" Sweetie Belle trailed off and tears welled in her eyes.

"She's alright, I patched her up as best I could," said Rarity, trying to sound reassuring. "Everything will be fine, Sweetie, I'm here to—"

"Disrobe," interrupted Coconut.

The CEO blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

"Clothes off, now," he said impatiently. "We have no way of knowing what you're hiding under there."

She sighed.

"Very well."

When the CEO had stripped naked, Pinkie handed her a tiny magnetic pin.

"Clip this on an earring or something," she told her breezily. "If you take it off, we'll kill your sis."

As Rarity attached the pin, her NOI flickered slightly but remained operational. She kept her face carefully immobile. It seemed that the pin was intended to be an electronic jammer. Unfortunately for her captors, when Rarity underwent the operation to install her neuro-optical interface her mother had insisted on purchasing the most expensive model available, Spite V11. One of the less advertized features of this model was that it was hardened against radiation, thwarting any attempts to disable it via EMPs or jammers.

_An ace in the hole._

"Tell your security to stay on the ground floor. If I see any of 'em up and about when we leave, the pipsqueak gets it," said Coconut.

Rarity made a show of calling Eiffel over and telling him to herd the remainder of the security force to the bottom level of the building.

"Are you quite certain about this, madam?" Eiffel asked gravely.

"We have no choice."

She sent him a brief message over the Grapevine as he trudged back to meet with the guards.

**(21:45) **_[Girls-Best-Friend] joined the conversation._

**(21:45) Girls-Best-Friend: **Eiffel?

**(21:45) Girls-Best-Friend: **Keep walking; I'm not talking to you right now.

**(21:46) Girls-Best-Friend: **Don't worry about this overmuch. I have a plan. Do as I told you, but be prepared to mobilize the force as soon as these raiders tell me what they're after. We have explosives in place for situations like these, remember? I need you to ready those ASAP.

**(21:46) Girls-Best-Friend: **And round up the marksmen. I'll keep in touch.

* * *

The titanium doors to the labs were large, heavy and immobile. The DNA-reader console next to them was dark. Rarity looked back at Coconut.

"It seems that barring the use of heavy explosives, we can't get in."

Coconut gave Pinkie a meaningful pat on the side. The decker mare unzipped her saddlebag and with some difficulty hefted out a car battery.

Rarity raised a well-groomed eyebrow.

"Please tell me you're joking, dear. That battery will power the doors and the console for maybe thirty seconds at best. As soon as it runs

"We'll manage," said Coconut, glowering.

Pinkie ripped several wires out of the console and examined them critically. After a few seconds, she taped a pair of them to the two electrodes on the battery, triggering a shower of sparks. The console lit up, piercing the gloom of the powerless building.

"Open it."

Rarity licked a forehoof and swiped it over the reader. The doors juddered and parted, granting them passage into the darkened test lab interior. Countless inactive computers decorated the first room, and several bulky servers were lined up along the walls near the door.

"Watch the kid for a sec, would ya?"

Coconut approached one of the servers and, getting behind the machine, started to push on it. The structure creaked and groaned as the supports securing it to the floor were steadily weakened. With a grunt and a final violent shove, the machine tipped over producing a deafening crash. Coconut shoved the downed server into the doorway just as the DNA-reader depleted the car battery. The titanium jaws clamped around the server, fruitlessly trying to cut through it.

Coconut sighed, catching his breath.

"This'll do."

The group advanced through the immaculate tiled chambers of the testing and QA department. Rarity led the way deeper into the compartmentalized area, opening door after door. Various consoles and charts of uncertain purpose were spread along the floors, usually behind an acrylic glass screen or occasionally more durable material, marked with yellow jacket hazard stripes. A number of prototypes and untested components were suspended on the cubicle walls inside damage-resistant cases. There was a little of everything: new firearms of the three equine builds—Levitus, spinal turrets and leg-mounted cannons—sleek, sexy prosthetics and implants, assorted body armors and mob suits, bio-aug serums and other, less definable organic material inside absolute zero refrigeration apparatuses. There were a number of more innocuous-seeming items as well, including various home appliances such as cleaning robots and autobarbers.

It was in one of the cubicles that Rarity stopped and produced a newly-built—though no less obsolete—portable console from a hidden compartment.

"Here you are," she said, giving the console to Pinkie. "Project Huehuecóyotl is dormant inside this machine."

Pinkie looked at the console suspiciously, nursing a comedown headache.

"Why do you have Project Weh-weh-whatever in this old thing?"

"Standard procedure. An artificial intelligence is always coded inside an isolated machine. This minimizes the risk of it escaping or being stolen or causing unchecked damage. Huehuecóyotl is pretty primitive as of yet, so I'm not sure that it was worth breaking into my facility for."

"Great, whatever," said Coconut and, addressing Pinkie, "Jack in and make sure that everything checks out."

Pinkie looked at him incredulously.

"That's a _dumb _idea. The thing could be dangerous! It could fry my deck!"

"Open it in safe mode, you'll be fine. If your deck really does burn out, I'll buy you a new one once this is all over."

At this point Pinkie was too worn out to argue. The drugs had run their course, leaving her on the verge of collapsing into a fetal position. She plugged her keyboard into the console and activated it, making sure to switch the device into safe mode. Rows upon rows of files scrolled across her display strip. The scroll bar on the side of the screen shrunk until it was nearly microscopic. There must have been thousands of files stored on this console. Going through every one of them would have taken Pinkie several decades alone. She began opening files at random, leering at the contents.

"Well?" Spring Skies asked. "Is this it?"

"If it isn't, it's a very convincing counterfeit." Pinkie glanced over several files in tandem, suddenly noticing something off about them. "Hold on a sec…"

"What is it?" asked Coconut.

Pinkie turned to face the CEO.

"This code looks like it's been written in practically every programming language ever conceived, for no discernible purpose! Most teams I've seen avoid using more than one language if possible. Why risk writing disjointed instructions like this? I'm seeing scraps of code on here that shouldn't even work together."

Rarity looked back sheepishly.

"Some of our programming core are a little, shall we say, eccentric. I don't understand the details myself; I'm not much of a coder. The AI—what little there is of it at the moment—does work, though sometimes it may act a little erratically."

"Fine," said Coconut. "That's all we need. Now you're gonna take us up to the roof, boss-mare. We'll be taking one of your helicopters outta here."

"All our helicopters are DNA-locked, I fear," Rarity replied.

Coconut frowned. "Then you'll provide us with a pilot. I thought you corporate types were supposed to be smart."

**(21:59) Girls-Best-Friend: **Are the explosives in place?

**(22:00) ToweringSolace: **They are, madam. The trap has been set.

**(22:00) Girls-Best-Friend: **And our contingency measure? What of the marksmen?

**(22:00) ToweringSolace: **Lying in wait inside the rooftop ventilation ducts, awaiting your signal.

**(22:00) Girls-Best-Friend: **Fantastic. Inform them that we should be arriving to the helipad within ten minutes.

* * *

The winds were picking up as the CEO, the raiders and the hostage marched across the darkened helipad. The landing lights weren't working. Rarity made a mental note to rewire them into the emergency circuit at some point in the near-future. The well-kept blacktop dimly reflected the brilliant crescent moon overhead. Far below, the police sirens wailed unheeded.

A single helicopter was positioned in the center of the helipad, with a young, scrawny-looking pilot seated at the controls, looking anxious.

Coconut turned back to Rarity.

"You did good, boss-mare. Not to worry; we'll send your brat back safe and sound as soon as we verify that we can negotiate a decent price for the AI."

Rarity stiffened.

"You… You're taking Sweetie Belle with you?"

"Obviously," said Coconut, scoffing. "How stupid do you think we are? You could shoot the chopper right out of the sky if we just let you have her here and now. She also happens to be our insurance. If the AI isn't worth as much as my contacts think, we'll sell the kid back to you for a ransom. Consider yourself lucky that we're only taking the one or the other."

He flashed a mirthless smirk and turned away, walking a sobbing Sweetie Belle to the helicopter at gunpoint.

"Wait."

Coconut stopped and looked scowling back at her. "What is it now?"

Rarity cleared her throat. "That helicopter has been tampered with; it will explode as soon as the engine starts. Please take one of the others. I apologize for—"

He cuffed her hard across the face. She reeled and fell over backwards, landing sprawled across the unforgiving asphalt.

"_Bitch_. Stop wasting our fucking time."

Rarity heard Sweetie Belle calling her name as she was led away. The crescent moon shone high over her but spared no words of condolence or advice. Her mouth tasted of metal and her lip stung. She shivered as the wind caressed her body.

The rotors of one of the other helicopters started to spin in the distance.

She heard Coconut's scream for all of two seconds before it was lost in the persistent wind. Her tongue traced her bloodied lip and her mouth curled into a smile.

* * *

"Coconut, calm down, _what's wrong_?!"

Spring Skies struggled to be heard over the stallion's shrieks as he stumbled and grasped for his head with one of his forehooves. The spreadgun chambered another shell.

"Pinkie, get the gun!"

Pinkie rushed forward and grabbed the barrel of the firearm, just barely wrestling it away from the stallion's head in time. The shell fragments broke apart, escaping harmlessly into the night sky.

"Get a grip, you fucking idiot!"

Coconut's screams molded into strained Equestrian mixed with glossolalic gibberish.

"_Iaaaaaa… Too much…! Can't… Can't understand… Mother of Celestia, these fucking fractals go on forever… Peel away the first layer and underneath there is only chaos, wearing away at everything…_"

His speech devolved into incoherent babbling interspersed with choking. Blood gushed from his mouth. He'd bitten off his own tongue.

His spinal turret spun wildly, firing at random. Pinkie felt a sting as a stray bullet clipped her side. Spring attempted to pin down the stallion, but his flailing made the task nearly impossible. Coconut's legs, shuddering as though he'd forgotten how to use them, propelled him across the helipad until one of his hooves caught on the ledge. He stood swaying there for a good two seconds before gravity took over. His screams were abruptly cut short as his body met the ground five hundred feet below. The whole sequence was almost comical.

Pinkie straightened up, shaky on her feet from the adrenaline rush.

"What the hay was—?"

Her display strip flashed and filled with nonsense characters and commands. Mixed among the junk text, a series of bolded messages blinking at the center of the screen drew her eye.

**In_ITia#*LiZ-inG ent!ty...**

**Par$i Ng s0uR-ce code...**

**Rend ER^^ing per$0nAlit y mA tRix... **

**ReSo lving w0rld-Ly con&cErNssssss...**

**Huehuecóyotl AcTi%ve.**

A monstrous eye appeared on the display strip and winked at her. It had a vertical lid, a sickly yellow sclera and a blood-red iris.

She yelped, ripping the strip from her ports and throwing it on the ground. A cursor advanced across the torn screen, typing out a message before flickering out as the strip lost power.

**WHAT A SHAME.**

**HE HAD SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR.**

Spring Skies trained her rifle on Pinkie, suspicious of the outburst.

"Are you gonna lose it too?"

Pinkie raised her forehooves in a gesture of peace for as long as her sense of balance allowed.

"Easy, babe. I'm alright, see?"

She abruptly came to the realization that someone was missing.

"Hey, wait a second. Where's the kid?"

A familiar voice rang out over the pad, unstrained against the howling winds, making it difficult to hear.

"I recommend that you come quietly."

Rarity had gotten back on her feet and stood a fair distance away looking serene despite her bruised cheek and split lip. Pinkie and Spring could make out Sweetie Belle hiding behind her. The two were backed by a number of armed Carousel commandoes that had materialized from somewhere while the raiders were distracted.

Perhaps desperate or enraged, Spring Skies moved to raise her burst rifle once more.

The commandoes hosed her down. The hollow-point bullets tore through her flesh until she was practically unrecognizable. Her burst rifle flew off her foreleg and was reduced to scrap metal as it sailed through the air. When the gunfire ceased, all that was left of Spring Skies was a shredded husk of tissue. It collapsed onto the blacktop with a wet _slap_.

The stallion Pinkie vaguely identified as Eiffel leveled his pistol at her. She opened her mouth to protest or beg forgiveness but it made no difference.

It felt as though someone had punched her in the chest. Something warm dripped down her foreleg and she was reminded of the nosebleed she'd had a half hour ago. She touched the point of entry with her fingers. It was an exercise in abstract thinking; her fingers could not feel the blood or the wound as they were prosthetic, and the wound itself didn't hurt since her nerves were apparently too far gone to report any pain. Eventually, her knees buckled under her.

_Paralytic rounds. Talk about fucking overkill. You'd think that a hollow-point bullet would be damaging enough for these psychos. _

Gradually, she began to lose consciousness. Each breath became laborious and her eyelids grew heavy. The scene on the rooftop spun away into darkness.

* * *

Pinkie found herself seated inside an oblong office, facing an expensive-looking antique mahogany desk. Bookshelves lined with leather-bound tomes and bottles of exotic alcohol were stood against the walls. The wallpaper was an elegant crimson, complementing the elaborate hypotrochoid patterns tiled into the floor. The head of a grizzly bear was mounted on the wall behind the desk, appearing to Pinkie as grotesquely out of place. The windows looked out into a featureless white void. Gazing through them for too long prompted a feeling of indefinite existential unease.

All in all, the office seemed to radiate an aura of nostalgia for days gone by, much like a set for some sort of period piece.

Pinkie could not, for the life of her, remember how she'd gotten here. The last thing she could recall was passing out atop the rooftop of Carousel Industries after a raid gone sour. A cursory examination of her body revealed no gunshot wound.

"Am I dead?" she wondered aloud.

The wooden door behind her swung open. She twisted in her chair to see a white outline of a mare walk into the office.

"Not as of yet," said the outline.

It came around the desk and seated itself in the impressive old swivel chair. A three-dimensional framework appeared inside the outline and began to fill, like a texture being rendered over a model. When the last of the polygons was colored, the entity took on the spitting image of the CEO of Carousel Industries.

"Uh, hey," said Pinkie. "Rarity, right?"

The other mare nodded.

"Am I dreaming?" asked Pinkie.

"Close, but no cigar." Rarity took a cigarette out of one of the drawers as though the phrase reminded her of her own nicotine habit, lit it with basic pyromancy and inserted it into a holder. She bit the tip of the tube and drew on it before speaking again. "You're currently in intensive care. We jacked you into a virtuality because I wanted to have a word with you."

"A _virtuality_?" Pinkie looked around excitedly. "You mean like a _virtual reality_? You're kidding! I thought these things were just a rumor!"

"Just because something is rumored does not automatically disqualify it from being true. We've patented the technology and it should be released for commercial use within two or three years."

"Awesome! This is kinda unimaginative for a, um, virtuality though, isn't it?"

Rarity shrugged.

"Set backdrop variant two."

The void outside the windows was replaced by a grassy autumn meadow at sunset. The grass shivered in the breeze, and the distant maple trees shed their rusted leaves. Pinkie heard an owl hoot somewhere.

"Variant four."

The meadow vanished and an underwater coral reef took its place. A rainbow-toned mollusk crawled unhurriedly across the glass. Schools of tropical fish and shrimp drifted through the ridges of coral, seemingly unaware or uninterested in the underwater office.

"Variant nine."

A massive ringed gas giant appeared in the window, partially obscured by a violet moon. Pinkie thought that she could make out a nebula looming in the distance behind the celestial bodies.

"It's all very basic right now," said Rarity. "You have to learn to walk before you can run, if you'll forgive the platitude. I'm sure the entertainment industry will make good use of the tech, however."

"Variant three," tried Pinkie. "Variant five. Variant seven! _Pleeeeaaaaase_?"

"Only the designated controller can alter the virtuality," Rarity explained. "We wouldn't want you getting distracted."

"Alright fine," groaned Pinkie. "So how long have I been out?"

"About a day and a half. Not to worry—Eiffel has been reprimanded for shooting you." She turned her head fractionally to blow smoke. "But not too harshly; Sweetie Belle told me that you're the one who suggested taking her hostage."

"Psh! Yeah! And saved her life! Coconut was gonna just shoot her!"

"Was he?" Rarity broke away from the window to look Pinkie in the eye. "Well, if that's the case, you have my thanks. What's the matter? You look perplexed."

Pinkie tried to rouse her memories once more.

"What… What happened up there, on the roof? Coconut just… went _off _his nut. And then there were the nonsense characters on my display strip, and something that looked like an eye. What was that all about?"

Rarity drew on her cigarette again.

"Our AI-to-be, Huehuecóyotl, has been known to invade neuro-optical interfaces and fundamentally change its victim's perception of reality, usually for the worse. _Unfortunately_ your friend appears to be the latest on the list of its casualties." The way she pronounced the word made it clear that she did not regret Coconut's death in the slightest.

"But, but I thought your coyote was locked inside that old box console you gave us!" said Pinkie.

"It uploaded itself into your deck once you connected to it, and jumped to Coconut's NOI wirelessly. I neglected to mention that safe mode has not proven very effective in hindering it previously."

"Are you serious? What _is _this thing?!"

"Huehuecóyotl has been designed as a weapon," said Rarity, retaining her level tone. "It was intended to infiltrate hostile systems and disable them. _Permanently_. When interacting with the NOI it acts as a lethal neurovirus and when entering computer systems it deletes crucial system files and overloads the machine with custom malware and junk data. What you saw was only a prototype." She permitted herself a satisfied smirk. "Once it has been perfected, it will be able to evolve to bypass virtually any security system."

"Isn't it kinda," Pinkie bit her lip, "_not _a good idea to make something like that? How do you control it?"

"The programmers assure me that unchangeable parameters have been written into the code to keep the AI under our control. Rest assured that it will be rigorously tested before being utilized in the wild."

Pinkie looked skeptical. "Weeeellllll. I guess your coders know the program better than anyone. I hope you'll pull the plug on the thing if it doesn't cooperate though."

"Of course." Rarity leaned forward. "Now then. Miss Pinkamena Diane Pie. You strike me as a talented mare."

"Is this the part where you go 'I have a proposition for you'?" asked Pinkie, making sterling use of her 'serious' voice.

The CEO smiled thinly around her cigarette holder. "Done this before, have you?"

"Once or twice, yeah. What's up?"

"Carousel Industries is in sore need of a skilled datarat. Tell me Miss Pie, can you encrypt a Grapevine user connection to, say, hide the identity of a hypothetical operative of ours?"

Pinkie tilted her head quizzically.

"I could probably write an exploit, but chances are that it'd get patched in a mandatory update inside a week or two."

"Could you repeat what you did during the raid and disable a security AI?"

"I don't think I could replicate what I did on the raid. Being a successful decker requires the ability to improvise."

Rarity looked at the pink mare thoughtfully.

"_You snuck into our building without tipping off the identification software or the housekeeping construct and left with a set of blueprints that you shouldn't have been able to decrypt, all without alerting or injuring a single employee," she told him, trying to keep her voice level. _

_Binary looked back impassively, chewing on the cigarette she'd allowed him._

"_Could you do something like that again, if you had to?" she asked._

_He took the cigarette between his hooves and pulled it from his mouth carefully. _

"_I could try," he answered. The years of smoking left his voice gravelly and he had a tendency to break into fits of coughing. Unlike Rarity, he couldn't afford to have his lungs replaced on a whim. "But success wouldn't be guaranteed. A good decker knows how to improvise."_

"Can you maintain a low profile regarding the jobs we assign you?" she asked Pinkie finally.

"I _think_," said Pinkie dubiously. "But what if I don't wanna work for you guys?"

"If you refuse this job offer then we will take you off life support," Rarity replied. "If you would prefer death to working for us, feel free to decline. But if you _do _accept, you will receive a yearly salary of eighty thousand bits, and we will move you into corporate housing, where you'll be much better provided for than in the space you're renting from the Cake family. Lastly, the debt with your dealer will be settled and we will replace your severely damaged liver with one fresh from the vat."

Pinkie was about to question how Rarity knew about her personal concerns but realized that Carousel had probably read her memories while she was under.

"Sounds too good to be true," she noted, eyes narrowing. "What's the catch?"

"The catch, Miss Pie, is that you'll be fitted with a nanomachine leash, should you accept. Do you know what that means?"

Pinkie shook her head.

Rarity flicked excess ash from the tip of her cigarette. The dust evaporated as it fell.

"We will inject microscopic robots into your bloodstream. The half-life for these new tenants of yours will be about eight years, in the absence of a catastrophic hemorrhage, of course. You will do whatever we ask because if you try to rebel, we will activate the nanomachines, and they will heat up until they combust, effectively boiling your blood and cooking you from the inside out. Not a pleasant way to die, I assure you."

"I-is that for real?" Pinkie croaked.

"Not to worry. If you fulfill your contract with us, you will be set loose, with an attractive retirement package. But in the end, the choice is yours."

Pinkie looked at the floor pointedly.

_The choice to either die or live on as Carousel's slave. Great. _

Then again, she would be paid and taken care of. It was what she always dreamed of but couldn't have as a freelance decker. What was so bad about that?

_I will only be able to pursue committee-approved jobs. She makes it sound like a good deal, but I'm effectively losing my free will as soon as those creepy robots are inside me. Carousel could easily send me on a suicide mission if they want._

_I'd like to think I wouldn't be so disposable, given how much money they'd be investing in me, but in truth I have no clue how big a sum has to be before the company stops seeing it as an 'acceptable loss'._

But she did know one thing for sure. She wanted to keep living.

Rarity shifted in her chair and adjusted her dress shirt, seemingly just for something to do.

"Would you like more time to make your decision? I can leave you alone for as long as you wish."

Pinkie looked up.

"Don't worry about it. Where do I sign?"


End file.
